Blowdarts Should Work like Walter's Slingshot

[Wexton]

(I divided the post on 2 parts, one being the more nitty gritty details and the first being the basics of the idea, feel free to just read the basic part)

While testing out Walter I realized that he didn't have much potential for the lategame due to the low dps of the slingshot, so while I was thinking of ways that the slingshot could be improved, I realized that a better solution would be to give a feeling of progression to the character by improving the older version of ranged combat on don't starve and on the process we could make an old tactic more viable for other characters: Blowdarts.

Blowdarts can be quite a somewhat powerful weapon, shotting at high speeds and dealing high amounts of dmg from a distance (depending on the type of dart). Sadly they are extremely grindy to obtain. requiring tons of reeds and feathers for ONE blowdart. Here's my ideas on how to change it:

First of: Blowdarts should be a different item. Did you ever notice how the reeds on the recipe are because we craft a new blowdart every single time instead of just making darts? Making them their own weapon would allow them to get more complex recipes or even more versions of blowdarts (Magic blowdarts with homing darts made with living logs and nightmare fuel?) We could even get blowdart skins! (Example: Forge's Blowdarts)

Each blowdart could have enough durability for around 60 darts (making 60 shots take 8 reeds for crafting the blowdart instead of 60 for every bullet) and after making one we would only need to craft the darts themselfs. 

Example of how they could look: 

You should get 5 darts for every time you craft them(or atleast 2 or 3 in case of the more special ones like sleep or fire) And you should be able to stack 60 of them. The recipe should use ONE feather and one of the ingredients for their usual recipes per dart (5 hound teeth for a normal blowdart, for example) This idea its because the darts probably dont' use the entire feather during the recipe, but just a fragment of it for each dart.

An image for you to get the idea:

 

Annoying to read wall of text with some of the more in depth ideas for complex things like game balance that I would understand if you prefer not to read but I will still write them because I am bored and because its about the more controversial effects of the idea that I would like to hear some opinions about:

One thing I took in consideration while making the idea its that the objective of darts shouldn't be to overpower meele (Unless you are Walter, who is a ranged characted and needs atleast some way to bring the word "Cannon" into the Glass Cannon objective klei had for him), their only use for more advanced players should be just another tactic for some bosses (similar to gunpowder or bunnymen), and as a safer way for newer players to be able to participate in combat without risking too much (allowing them to stay at a distance and still be able to learn about the enemy's movements) Ranged should NEVER make meele obsolete since meele is riskier and that must be rewarded. Thats also why the next point its nerfing the damage multipliers (Mainly Wolfgang, who people generally consider Cheese, but blowdarts are probably one of the things that takes him to the extreme by being able to do 200 dmg by dart. being capable of overpowering meele, which as mentioned previously it shouldn't be the case.

Apart from this the darts should probably get some balance changes, for example, they shouldn't be affected by the character's dmg multiplier (Whats the logic? Are Wolfgang's or Wigfrid's lungs that much MIGHTIER than anyone else's? This would cause characters with a high dmg multiplier to want to go meele (since those characters are usually seen more as "tanks") And other characters with low dmg multiplier could take advantage of them (Like Wes or Wendy). Only exceptions like Walter could get a 25% extra damage using them since he's meant to the ranged.

Even with these changes, they still wouldn't be overpowered, since, for example: Its still way harder to make a the 225 darts to kill bee queen than the 4-8 dark swords to kill her with meele, so this changes would only really be useful for people that were really scared of meele, or people that just didn't want fight a boss with a dark sword after 128 fights like that. In case getting azure feathers still feels too grindy. There's also the cheaper and sometimes better lighting darts that will do 50 dmg and even more dmg during raining. But with how easy farming the feathers for them is and how the other ingredient is just gold... perhaps its better if we actually made them require MORE feathers if we make them not need reeds anymore, specially if klei ever fixes water ballons which would make these darts even more powerful than normal ones.

On an extra note, some enemies would require changes if we made range a bit more powerful, for example Klaus will never get too far from his loot stash, even if you are shooting him, making it so you can just press F (unless you hit the deer) until he reaches 2º phase where he will actually start jumping at you.

Another boss that one might think could be cheesed with range its crab king, but as many of you know neither the darts nor the slingshot can actually shot too far away, so even less at something thats nearly outside of the screen (distance you need to be for the crab king not to target you) so he will still be able to target you with his spells.

Another addition of separating the blow darts from the ammunition could also be the direct use of hound teeth or stingers as bullets without the need for feathers (perhaps with stingers doing 20-30 dmg and teeth doing 40-50) This would probably seem like a way worse use of resources since they do the same dmg that way cheaper meele weapons, but they could still be useful for newer players that don't know how to kite to help out fighting bosses acting as support while other players do meele (thing that Walter was probably meant to do, but his DPS is too low for it, but thats already being discussed a lot around the forums so I'll leave that for other topics).

Another idea its that if we reduce the price enough, normal darts should probably be reduced to around 70-80 dmg, so it will take more proyectiles to do their current dps, also causing them to take more inventory on the proccess which should be enough to not be stronger than meele, but would still allow for crafting enough of them for maybe some phase of a raid boss or maybe consider them for smaller enemies when on a dangerous situation like low health.

I will probably not add more edits to the post itself since its getting too bloated and I will just discuss it on replies, I am having a lot of fun writting down ideas, discussing feedback, or simply reading other opinions! (even if its something klei would probably never add to the game)

[.]

Great idea! Hope it's get attention.

[Yuuko]

Blow darts are VERY powerful... I'd rather they stayed powerful than became easier to farm.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

I dont think that blow darts should be cheaper. Do you want to deal 100 damage with no danger? Grind it

Making them easy to farm only will make more ridiculous fighting boss with a team

And honestly, i will not loose time farming a cheapers ones for having less damage when i have 68 with dark sword

[bruhmoment23]

I don't think this is a bad idea, but you havent said anything about it's damage other than "balancing", without taking actual numbers into the account. Following your idea with 60 dart ammo and one regular dart dealing 100 dmg that's about 6k dmg, that's enough to kill deerclops, bearger and goose, which is beyond broken. I like the refillable darts concept, but i feel like the darts and rest of ranged combat should be reworked from the scratch completely, or get somekind of QoL update regarding combat in general.

[Wexton]

1 hour ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

I dont think that blow darts should be cheaper. Do you want to deal 100 damage with no danger? Grind it

Making them easy to farm only will make more ridiculous fighting boss with a team

And honestly, i will not loose time farming a cheapers ones for having less damage when i have 68 with dark sword

Then we are back at the problem that you yourself just mentioned of nobody ever using blowdarts because they only do 32 more dmg points than a dark sword despite being a billion times more difficult to craft. (a dark sword can do a total of 6800 dmg, currently you would need 68 darts to do that dmg, and that would be 136 CUT REEDS, 68 AZURE FEATHERS and 68 hound teeth do, comparing to the 1 living log and 5 nightmare fuel of a sword (or even cheaper, a ham bat)

Personaly I would be happy with the only change on the price being not needing one cut reed per every single dart so worlds without reed traps or wickerbotton can still make SOME use of them (consider the fact that the recipes I mentioned would still need the same amount of hound teeths or gold for their darts)

However, I do understand that 5 darts per feather could be a tad overpowered, but unless a new way of getting azure feathers is added I would only expect Wickerbotton or Walter to grind for them while all the other characters will just go for the old and trusty ham bat for absolutly everything. (And don't be surprise that even with these changes like these nobody would probably ever use them anyway)

1 hour ago, bruhmoment23 said:

I don't think this is a bad idea, but you havent said anything about it's damage other than "balancing", without talking about actual numbers. Taking your idea with 60 dart ammo and one regular dart dealing 100 dmg that's about 6k dmg, that's enough to kill deerclops, bearger and goose, which is beyond broken. I like the refillable darts concept, but i feel like the darts and rest of ranged combat should be reworked from the scratch completely, or somekind of QoL update regarding combat in general.

I don't see why somebody would waste 10 feathers, a bunch of reeds and 40 hound teeth to kill a random boss (unless you had a Varg farm, teeth would run out eventually like that, so everybody would just use a ham bat or swords) Even with my idea of making them a tad cheaper to make it would still only be used by newer players too scared to melee bosses or as yet another grindy tactic for some raid bosses (for example killing bee queen without tanking, which would actually probably make her a more interesting fight than using 20 bunnymen as Walter tbh).

I agree 100% on reworking ranged or even all combat in general however, there's probably a billion better ways to do it than my post.

[Yuuko]

idk - I use blowdarts pretty often.  I find them very useful for the krampus spawns mid-klaus fight.  I can easily take out 1 krampus with 3 quick darts and then fight the other with a normal kiting routine.  I usually farm up a few from walrus before I start klaus the first year, and farm up a stack or so to keep on hand after that.  They are also pretty useful for catching agro without having to catch a boomerang lol  Koalefants, malbatros, stupid monkeys >_< all can catch my darts lol.  Blowdarts are a niche weapon.  They aren't supposed to be a standard thing you equip.  Ranged is *very* strong in this game, and the darts give you a lot of burst damage to go with that range.

[Wexton]

1 minute ago, Shosuko said:

idk - I use blowdarts pretty often.  I find them very useful for the krampus spawns mid-klaus fight.  I can easily take out 1 krampus with 3 quick darts and then fight the other with a normal kiting routine.  I usually farm up a few from walrus before I start klaus the first year, and farm up a stack or so to keep on hand after that.  They are also pretty useful for catching agro without having to catch a boomerang lol  Koalefants, malbatros, stupid monkeys >_< all can catch my darts lol.  Blowdarts are a niche weapon.  They aren't supposed to be a standard thing you equip.  Ranged is *very* strong in this game.

Thats the only use I ever gave to darts too! Until I found out that ice staffs can work for all of those uses (you can freeze one of the krampus from klaus while you kite the other and you can still use them for getting agro from Koelefants or goats making ranged damage even less necesary...)

Shotting down those stupid monkeys? Now thats worth even the grind they currently take!

[ArubaroBeefalo]

33 minutes ago, Wexton said:

Then we are back at the problem that you yourself just mentioned of nobody ever using blowdarts because they only do 32 more dmg points than a dark sword despite being a billion times more difficult to craft. (a dark sword can do a total of 6800 dmg, currently you would need 68 darts to do that dmg, and that would be 136 CUT REEDS, 68 AZURE FEATHERS and 68 hound teeth do, comparing to the 1 living log and 5 nightmare fuel of a sword (or even cheaper, a ham bat)

Personaly I would be happy with the only change on the price being not needing one cut reed per every single dart so worlds without reed traps or wickerbotton can still make SOME use of them (consider the fact that the recipes I mentioned would still need the same amount of hound teeths or gold for their darts)

However, I do understand that 5 darts per feather could be a tad overpowered, but unless a new way of getting azure feathers is added I would only expect Wickerbotton or Walter to grind for them while all the other characters will just go for the old and trusty ham bat. (And even with these changes nobody would probably use them anyway)

I don't see why somebody would waste 10 feathers, a bunch of reeds and 40 hound teeth to kill a random boss (unless you had a Varg farm, teeth would run out eventually like that, so everybody would just use a ham bat or swords) Even with my idea of making them a tad cheaper to make it would still only be used by newer players too scared to melee bosses or as yet another grindy tactic for some raid bosses (for example killing bee queen without tanking, which would actually probably make her a more interesting fight than using 20 bunnymen as Walter tbh).

I agree 100% on reworking ranged or even all combat in general however, there's probably a billion better ways to do it than my post.

But they are a tool not a main weapon. 

I have use them to help me when i wasnt experience in klaus fight or beequeen or fire darts for deerclops to keep me warm. I see that reeds are weird resouce but maybe just changing a little the recipe will work better. But having the possibility of deal high dps in a safe range as a main weapon is just too op (see how klei has desing the range weapon of walter, is balanced). 

 

[Wexton]

1 hour ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

But they are a tool not a main weapon. 

I have use them to help me when i wasnt experience in klaus fight or beequeen or fire darts for deerclops to keep me warm. I see that reeds are weird resouce but maybe just changing a little the recipe will work better. But having the possibility of deal high dps in a safe range as a main weapon is just too op (see how klei has desing the range weapon of walter, is balanced). 

 

Thats exactly the point of the post, making the recipe something more reliable for newer players (since they are probably not going to farm that many feathers) so they have a new safer but still grindier than meele tactic to learn how to deal with bosses (In fact am currently editing the post giving some more ideas for that, like being able to just use stingers or teeth themselfs as proyectiles but with much lower dmg to make them far from viable strategies, but good for learning. There's simply no way to make ranged something that more advanced players will ever consider over meele unless we make it ridiculously cheap (like 1 feather for 10 bullets) which is not the way to go anyways as meele should be rewarded for being riskier.

 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 hour ago, Wexton said:

Thats exactly the point of the post, making the recipe something more reliable for newer players (since they are probably not going to farm that many feathers) so they have a new safer but still grindier than meele tactic to learn how to deal with bosses (In fact am currently editing the post giving some more ideas for that, like being able to just use stingers or teeth themselfs as proyectiles but with much lower dmg to make them far from viable strategies, but good for learning. There's simply no way to make ranged something that more advanced players will ever consider over meele unless we make it ridiculously cheap (like 1 feather for 10 bullets) which is not the way to go anyways as meele should be rewarded for being riskier.

Thats exactly the point of the post, making the recipe something more reliable for newer players (since they are probably not going to farm that many feathers) so they have a new safer but still grindier than meele tactic to learn how to deal with bosses (In fact am currently editing the post giving some more ideas for that, like being able to just use stingers or teeth themselfs as proyectiles but with much lower dmg to make them far from viable strategies, but good for learning. There's simply no way to make ranged something that more advanced players will ever consider over meele unless we make it ridiculously cheap (like 1 feather for 10 bullets) which is not the way to go anyways as meele should be rewarded for being riskier.

what i mean is that the blow darts should keep their 100 damage and being "expensive" but maybe not requering a so limited material as reeds are