Slim & Grim? What Odds Are Better?

[thegreatJash]

This is driving me nuts because I don't know exactly what grim means in that sort of context. I would assume Grim means better odds than Slim, since all the more powerful survivors fall in that category, but then Warly's chances are Grim too. Warly is the last survivor I would expect to survive. I'm losing sanity at a fast rate not knowing what odds are better and what odds are worse.

Please help.

[Hornete]

Slim is average

Grim is below average

[Blueleaf12]

I assumed Grim is worse odds, because for a beginner, those characters are a lot harder for someone to pick up and play. Warly is a nightmare if you don't know what you're doing. 

[Yuuko]

Its not an exact science...

[Lovely Roses]

I think slim is a better odd, because im pretty sure Klei added the odds of survival for new players so that they don't pick character's like: Warly or Wes since there play style is more geared toward more experienced players. also it just happens that some of the more powerful character's are a little harder to play.   

[Mike23Ua]

I honestly thought the odds of survival would be a bit more detailed- like the game personally adding up data of how you play the game, what you do in said game, how often you struggle/die, and from there it would give you stats based off your personal gameplay on which character the game feels suits you best.

For example if you die a lot to shadow monsters %of survival would go up in choosing Willow, if you die a lot to simple bee nests & darkness % of playing Wendy goes up.

Klei said they added this to help aid new players when picking a character,

Slim, Grim and None (for Wes) is cute and all lol but I hope they provide actual statistics at some point that helps.

[lemon demon]

Grim applies to Maxwell, therefore it's the harder one 

[Scrimbles]

I got confused too when I saw Wicker was labelled as grim.

 

That was a good laugh.

[MondayNight]

1 minute ago, Ogrecakes said:

I got confused too when I saw Wicker was labelled as grim.

 

That was a good laugh.

Go in pubs, see how bulk player-base manage Wicker: when they go insane, they hardly recover or plain die via Shadows. For vast majority of players is a grim perspective (as Wicker can't sleep and most have no clue to where even find sanity food/ingredients). Sure for you that and those players might provide "a good laugh".

 

As for the topic, Grim is tougher than Slim.

[Wumpus the 19th]

they had a bit more elaborate version of the "odds be in your favor if you pick this" in oni

it gives a different rating for every planet, as well as some tips for what you should do/can do later on

although in oni the planets are much more linear in difficulty.

[Well-met]

is wortox really "hard" though?

[MondayNight]

15 minutes ago, Well-met said:

is wortox really "hard" though?

The Compendium is mostly made for new and casual players. They form most of the player-base. Think a bit from their perspective: you have a character that gets only 1/2 from foods values, eating souls gets player insane and prone to Shadows attacks. For vast majority of them newbies/noobs/casuals that alone is quite hard to overcome one way or the other. On top of it Wortox is a monster, meaning is attacked on spot by Pigs, thus even more difficult to Survive. And harvesting Pig Skin way more arduous. In conclusion yes, from player-base perspective (low-to-medium skill levels) Wortox is really hard.

[me real life]

1 hour ago, Ogrecakes said:

I got confused too when I saw Wicker was labelled as grim.

 

That was a good laugh.

The odds of survival aren't meant to convey anything to an experienced player, as you'll likely already know the perks and intricacies of any given character. Odds of survival are supposed to help guide new players towards which characters they pick starting out, and like it or not Wickerbottom is going to be more difficult for someone who is still reading the character select for information on characters. They've got to worry about higher sanity, no sleeping, stale food, and they don't know how to use the books properly and have to sacrifice sanity to test out. This information is meant to tell those players to maybe start out with someone else.

[thegreatJash]

Alright, I get it now.

I was looking at it from wrong angle.

Thanks guys :)

[Scrimbles]

1 hour ago, Sunset Skye said:

The odds of survival aren't meant to convey anything to an experienced player, as you'll likely already know the perks and intricacies of any given character. Odds of survival are supposed to help guide new players towards which characters they pick starting out, and like it or not Wickerbottom is going to be more difficult for someone who is still reading the character select for information on characters. They've got to worry about higher sanity, no sleeping, stale food, and they don't know how to use the books properly and have to sacrifice sanity to test out. This information is meant to tell those players to maybe start out with someone else.

It's just odd that they went with a "chance of survival" line instead of something more accurate, like "knowledge required" or just skill level or something.

Wicker's downsides are things most players, even new ones, hardly need to worry about, and learning to avoid stale/spoiled food is a lesson you learn very quickly.

Otherwise, her tier 1 science makes things much easier in the early game, where new players obviously have the most trouble.

Wicker's books are hard for new players to get, but the aren't really required for her character, they are just extra bonus items.

[me real life]

1 hour ago, Ogrecakes said:

It's just odd that they went with a "chance of survival" line instead of something more accurate, like "knowledge required" or just skill level or something.

It's meant to be the odds of your survival when playing this character. At a new player's expected skill level.

[Dr. Safety]

I get that the rating system is geared towards newer players, but even with that in mind it is hard to separate the cast into 2 serious categories, and especially using words that practically mean the same thing given their context.

[CaptainChaotica]

Is it wrong that the second I read the thread's title, I IMMEDIATELY thought it sounded like a new series on Adult Swim or the like?  "The Adventures of Slim and Grim!  Coming soon to a...screen near you!"

Anyway, if "slim" is AVERAGE survival rate, then...well that sounds about typical especially for noobs, yeah.

...Notorious

[Yuuko]

48 minutes ago, Sunset Skye said:

It's meant to be the odds of your survival when playing this character. At a new player's expected skill level.

Yeah but why would Wickerbottom be Grim then?  She has no negatives that really impact play, and starts with tier 1 science unlocked.  She can make a log suit, spear, and backpack out of materials found at the spawn gate.  That's a pretty easy start, no reason she should be labeled as "hard."

Meanwhile Wurt is labeled as easy when she requires a lot of set up to sustain.  She needs to either get a kelp farm going (lunar island, gma, or a lot of pushing in boats) or improved farms (only 1/3 of farms can be food, so like 10 farms would give her 3 durians a day to sustain her) which turn off in winter...

I also find it odd that Webber is listed as Grim considering he can spiderbase, get all the food and healing he wants, free defense against hound attacks.  Sure pigs may attack him, but that's about as much challenge as spiders which everyone else has to deal with...  I always considered Webber a great ez mode character.

idk what I was really expecting... but maybe a day count at which most people die with said character?  Like "average life expectancy of Wurt is 28 days" or something.  I know they collect metadata on some level, it would probably be a better indicator than just "slim / grim" and I'm sure Wes would still be none XD

[CaptainChaotica]

Okay, I'm really confused...can anybody point me to where the "odds of survival" thing is?  I'm in the Compendium, looked at each character's individual page, and can't find that bit of information anywhere.

(Also, Wurt is the character with tthe closest birthday to mine?  Huh!  The More You Know.)

...Notorious

[Mike23Ua]

6 minutes ago, CaptainChaotica said:

Okay, I'm really confused...can anybody point me to where the "odds of survival" thing is?  I'm in the Compendium, looked at each character's individual page, and can't find that bit of information anywhere.

(Also, Wurt is the character with tthe closest birthday to mine?  Huh!  The More You Know.)

...Notorious

It’s only seen when selecting them in game not the compendium thing.

[meowswing]

Interesting. It seems that I also misinterpret this thing entirely. Originally I thought this was plain trolling by Klei, making fun of those who make tier lists. Afterwards I thought "Grim" is for the more OP characters (like Wicker), but I do agree, I got thrown off by Warly. Now it makes more sense.

[CameoAppearance]

I assumed the odds of survival were a joke. Like, there's a trend towards user-friendly characters being rated Slim and characters with a lot of moving parts in their kit or harsh disadvantages or something unexpected about how they play being rated Grim, but between the similar naming of both categories and the number of characters who fall very close to the line or could reasonably be argued to belong in either the easy or the hard category, I don't think this is actually going to help very many newbies make a fair judgment of which characters to choose except maybe scaring them away from Wes. And I'm skeptical about whether it was ever intended to; it seems pretty likely that we're doing what many fanbases before us have done and rationalising meaning into something that wasn't intended to have any.

Like, I don't think Woodie is actually easier to play than Wickerbottom. Both of them have a lot of stuff in their toolkit that's powerful when properly applied but also give the player the chance to dig themself into a dangerous hole if they don't understand what they're doing; they even both specifically offer the chance for a newbie who's not good at combat or quick sanity restoration to get torn apart by half a dozen Terrorbeaks. And WX-78 is probably less newbie-friendly than those two, because they start with mediocre stats and you generally have to fight a lot of clockworks, which newbies are not known for being good at, to get your stats high enough to shrug off danger. I don't know if the average newbie could find the ruins on their own without getting killed, and unless it's a solo world, someone who wanted to make an icebox or a flingomatic will probably get annoyed with you if you eat all or most of the gears from the overworld clockworks. On top of that, if it's spring when you join you can lose like half your 150 starting HP to a rainstorm. It's easy to say WX-78 is OP in an expert's hands, but that doesn't really transfer to novice WX-78 players nearly as well as, say, Wolfgang's advantages do... and Wolfgang is rated Grim, whereas WX is rated Slim.

[themightyone]

I always thought it was just meant to be funny . It makes me chuckle everytime I see it . Especially  Wes with None listed

[MagicalSkies]

Thank gosh people are explaining this, I got really mad when it said Wendy’s chances of survival were slim-

 

But yeah, the odds of survival are probably directed to new players and to help them when choosing a character.