wx78 Wx78 Rework ideas and Brainstorming.

[Seero]

 

Hello! I've wanted to make a thread surrounding Wx78's future rework for a while, Klei hasn't announced anything yet but how about we get a head start on suggestions? Let's give our Favorite robot some love.

Who Wx78 is currently:

First off, even thought every character is going to be reworked by klei because they've said it themselves, let's go over WHY he needs to be reworked. I'll do this by describing his perks currently and explain why they're unsatisfactory.

•  Not a picky eater (Can eat spoiled food with the same benefits)

  Let's start simple, personally, I have little to no qualms with this, it's simple, fits his status as a robot and quite beneficial. It's a QOL thing. However this might be a bit too powerful, even if foods have a life span, with a quick google search (and common sense) that foods that are stale/spoiled give off less nutrients. So it's almost as if Wx over here is creating nutrients/fuel out of thin air. I think he's better off Getting the same benefits from fresh food when eating stale foods, but not spoiled foods.

• Getting damaged when wet 

  This is another perk of his that would only require a slight change. Increased damage to make water more of a trouble for him, he's a robot made in the 1900s after all. I'd say a good increase would be increasing his damage by 3/4th when wet/in rain or doubling the damage 

• Being able to permanently increase stats with gears.

This (and system overload) are both Wx78's main perks. These two perks are the main reason I think Wx78 needs an overhaul. Basically, he can "eat" gears to increase his health, hunger, and sanity. He can eat how many gears as he pleases but he can only upgrade 15 times  His max health is 400, sanity is 300, hunger is 200. Now this sounds cool on paper but after maining Wx78 for a really long time, this is a very boring attribute, it's a simple stat increase, you could compare him to Wolfgang in a way but Wolfgang is a lot more fun simply cause you can increase damage output and movement speed - now that's fun for fighting monsters, it's also scaled off of hunger and it's not permanent. I digress, back to Wx78. 

He also can just eat gears for health, hunger, sanity. Which technically you can live off of them if you're always ruins raiding. While it technically makes sense for him to be "repaired" by eating gears, this kinda encourages gear hoarding + there isn't a need to use gears as food, sure they heal a lot but It's really easy to just chug a few gears and be at full stats. It's too powerful, to put it simply.

I'll explain what he could possibly have instead of this, after I go over his final perk.

• When struck by lightning, he becomes overcharged. He gets a 1.5x speed boost, immune to freezing and emits light. This overcharged state lasts a day and it can be stacked with multiple charges of lightning, however you get less overcharge everytime you're struck.

If Wx78's gear perk wasn't as boring as it is, I think I would still be advocating for an overhaul. This perk opens up a whole new can of worms. Now we enter the problem of Wx78 being TOO dependent in this game, let me explain. So after looking at all the sources from lightning in DST, there aren't many reliable ones.

 Note that in DST you can't hammer a Pseudo Station for lightning. I'm mainly going to focus on the last one. This is where his dependability comes in. So because of wickerbottoms way of creating lightning, she's the only optimal source for him. Now I understand that teamwork is good however I don't think it's good balancing to have your perk be locked unless someone unlocks it for you. It's really good but really not practical, and even in a game about teamwork, it makes him completely dependent, I think characters should be able to utilize all of there perks in a solo world, but have those perks be useful in synergy with others. (Warly is a good example of this, he can create and eat all of his dishes, get the food on his own, and season it how he pleases while Wx78 needs wickerbottom to be overcharged)

The conclusion of all this is that Wx78 can be summarized as "Wilson with higher stats" Given his situational/un-practical speed boost and his meager "Food spoilage gives full stats" perk and his very easy to overcome downside "damaged when wet", his potential is explored very minimally given he is a robot.

What could his rework/overhaul entail?

First off, this idea I have for Wx78 is based off of a mod. Link to it is right here, it's quite an old mod. It goes off of the concept of Overhauling his gear-perk into an modular-upgrade system. This puts Wx78 at his full potential and role as a robot. As an automaton/robot, he should be a jack of all trades given he is humanoid, it would be strange if he couldn't do everything atleast slightly better then average. These "Modules" could be craftable and he can consume them, giving him an upgrade to a specific stat, these stats don't just include health, hunger, sanity but rather this;

• Health
• Hunger
• Sanity
• Attack damage
• Movement speed
• # of chops to chop a tree/chop speed
• # of mines to mine a rock/mine speed
• Possibly more..?

Now before I continue this isn't to make Wx78 a character who can  be like Wolfgang, Woodie and Maxwell at the same time. Quite obviously, these stat boosts can be good but a good balance to them is to have them function exclusively/giving them a hard/softcap/ sacrificing other stats in favor of others. Like going for a damage/speed setup but sacrificing sanity/hunger. There are many ways to do this in order to prevent other characters from becoming obsolete. He should be a "jack of all trades" not a "god of all trades" to me the former statement means he can do a lot of stuff, but not to the best of some others. This can all be done while having him being damaged by rain/not too sure about his food perk, and if this system is implemented I think Wx78 can do without overcharge because (for the sake of accuracy and not realism) Electronics don't really like it when they're surged with a lot of electricity. upgrading yourself to be speedy would nullify it anyways and he doesn't need to be immune to freezing. Illuminating is another story but, you can just use the lights you have already.

I think this is all I have to say for now, thanks for making it down here. I hope you guys understand my feelings/concerns about Wx78.

Please tell me your ideas/feedback for his rework! I want to hear all of your thoughts!

Sources for his perks/the images I uploaded: https://dontstarve.fandom.com/wiki/WX-78

 

Edit: These Upgrade modules could cost frazzled wires or even ruins loot.

The speed one could also be exceptionally expensive considering how beneficial speed is in the game.

Maybe we can have a lumination one? Or just one that conserves fuel from miner hats/lanterns/moggles

instead of lightning being beneficial, it could be detrimental, 2x or 3x the damage.

As I said the cost of these upgrades could be reserved for mid-to-late game or general just be something only you can rush to get and it'd be difficult otherwise to not undermine maxwell/woodie's purpose (although Maxwell can be hardly matched in chopping/mining)

[Bluegeist]

I've tried to play WX, but what really turns me off is the gear eating thing. I hate feeling like I'm wasting them on myself when they can be used to build stuff, also how some are lost forever when you die (which I do a lot x-x). Also, I don't play public worlds, but I've heard that WX players get kicked on the spot because of griefing by eating gears and that makes me sad. Basically, the gear-eating is an artifact of a single player game that doesn't work well when playing with others. I wouldn't mind if they completely remove it.

They could replace it with a similar mechanic like that module mod, which would be exciting gameplay wise and lore wise. What would WX have to go through to justify such a change? Like how the moon getting more powerful explains Woodie's additional transformations.

[Seero]

3 minutes ago, Bluegeist said:

I've tried to play WX, but what really turns me off is the gear eating thing. I hate feeling like I'm wasting them on myself when they can be used to build stuff, also how some are lost forever when you die (which I do a lot x-x). Also, I don't play public worlds, but I've heard that WX players get kicked on the spot because of griefing by eating gears and that makes me sad. Basically, the gear-eating is an artifact of a single player game that doesn't work well when playing with others. I wouldn't mind if they completely remove it.

They could replace it with a similar mechanic like that module mod, which would be exciting gameplay wise and lore wise. What would WX have to go through to justify such a change? Like how the moon getting more powerful explains Woodie's additional transformations.

I think some modules should require gears to craft because that just makes sense but maybe it's time we should be able to craft gears? Maybe Wx78 can craft gears at an expensive cost. it provides an alternative to ruins raiding. Which already rewards you with a ton of gears.

 

Also I just got a new idea, what if we not only had modules, but an upgraded version of them only craftable with ruins loot/at a pseudo station? Would really fit because currently Wx78 is actually extremely adept at raiding the ruins, given all the problems I mentioned for him, this is the thing he does the best, better then wolfgang maybe

[Kur0u]

I think instead of taking damage from rain he should get a speed decrease, the fear of every WX main perhaps? Avoid getting wet at all costs. 10% decrease in speed when just a bit wet, 20% at half meter and 30% at full meter. Something like a rust getting his limbs all clunky.

[Seero]

1 hour ago, Kuro_kira said:

I think instead of taking damage from rain he should get a speed decrease, the fear of every WX main perhaps? Avoid getting wet at all costs. 10% decrease in speed when just a bit wet, 20% at half meter and 30% at full meter. Something like a rust getting his limbs all clunky.

ooooo That sounds really dangerous, but instead of that what if the stats that he upgraded decreased when he's wet? because people might (unlikely) not do a speed-based build. For instance if you get wet where you have a lot of damage upgrades, those damage upgrades will start to give less damage, because .7x speed modifier seems fitting but I think it might be too much.

This should be counterable however, maybe an upgrade that allows you too glow? it could cost lightbulbs.

[Seero]

3 hours ago, Borba said:

""with a quick google search (and common sense) that foods that are stale/spoiled give off less nutrients".

 

Methane gas?☺️

Do you mean methane gas as a sort of fuel for Wx78? I'm a tad bit confused.

[EzraFinichi]

I always thought that the rain was only a genuine threat if you were already at low health(single digits kind of low).