Help with Wurt - Tips

[Yuma Arcl]

So, today I bought Wurt and I wanted some tips and tricks from those who have played as her (solo experience).

Is the King worth making? Should I rush the merms? Make my base at the swamp or take the swamp to my base? Any tips when using the merms? Etc.

Thanks!

[Mike23Ua]

King- No, soon as you elect a king all your normally hostile Merms become peaceful.. strange trade-off that ain’t worth it.

Base Directly in a Swamp, preferably one with 4 to 5 already pre built Merm shacks in it & you can build your own homes and expand upon the already existing defenses, Being in a Swamp gives you nearly infinite access to Silk & Pet Fish, which lets you craft a top hat Hat+ Pet Fish = No sanity drain effects ever, you’ll also likely end up with a healthy supply of healing glands and tentacle spike weapons early on.

Just take caution not to kill out your Merm Army, or let them kill out the Spiders. 
 

While playing Solo leave all food sources in the ground until you actually NEED them.. Juicy Berries don’t spoil until you pluck them, keep this in mind and you’ll survive Winter just fine when In a crockpot 1 Berries + 3 Ice = Fistful of Jam.

[Primalflower]

The king is not worth making until much later on, What the king most noticeably does is Buff your stats and allow warrior merms to spawn. Neither of these things are super worth dying over.

As for where you should base, It's mostly up to you. Generally speaking, Theres not really much for you at the swamp that you really need in mass that badly, So I suggest basing where you want, and only going to the swamp when you need to. 

As for tips when handling the merms, the big one is that you should know how little it takes to please them. A merm will accept practically any non meat item as a token of loyalty towards you, even seeds. Use that to your advantage to pay them very little for some cheap labor doing things like chopping trees / mining.

[Owlrust]

Wurt is by all means a "late-bloomer" in terms of mechanical design; as such, she requires a bit of know-how in the ways to manage herself in the early days before she can make the things that make her great. A lot of what I will say is my own personal preferences and I will post that beneath the tips I am going to post in a spoiler just below here

Tips

Spoiler

-  Consider searching out the Lunar Island early on for Stone Fruit trees and Bull Kelp stalks; the latter of which will, when planted, give you a guaranteed Kelp Frond every 3 days (it is not uncommon to amass at least 30-40 fronds this way every 3 days).
- Kelp takes only .25 of a day to dry on a Drying Rack and restores 10 sanity when eaten. Wurt benefits from this more as the hunger benefits are increased by 33% and she suffers no penalty from eating even raw/cooked fronds (a nice snack if you will).
- You can still hand Pigmen items as long as you manage to dodge their attacks (however you cannot befriend them), and if you hand them a Clever Disguise then they will become Neutral (still cannot befriend them). Useful for turning them into Werepigs if you wanted.
- You can completely negate the sanity loss of night or caves with a Top Hat and a Fish.
- Merms don't go home at dusk if you want to hire them
- Don't lead merm guards too far from home, as they have a hard time returning on their own.
- Merm Guards are immune to fear penalties (such as from the Bee Queen), so you will not have to worry about them running home.
- Wurt can still use meat if you amass them as they can be used to make fresh eggs that can, in turn, be used as crockpot filler. Very nice when you are loaded up on morsels, meat, or monster meat.
- Craftsmerm are nice for chopping trees and mining boulders (latter of which can be used for easily mining marble trees and Stone Fruit) as
  well as holding their own against tree guards very nicely (especially with Merm King alive).
- Giving the King of Merms a fish will reward Trinkets, Seeds, Rot, Spots, and Kelp Fronds.
- You can use a seed to befriend a merm.
- Consider using Birchnut Trees for tree farms than regular Pine Trees to gather both Living Logs and to amass Birchnuts for Trail Mix. 

I personally find it to be more profitable to bring the swamp with you to your base (that is to say, swamp turf) as you can reap the benefits of anywhere you are. The King of Merms is a nice benefit but, as many others have stated, it seems to be more beneficial to let each king starve and let a new merm take over than to actually feed him.

[ShadowDuelist]

I'll go from my experience with her:

• King worth it?: Yes, but not early game, or rushing him. Just wait until being well established and comfortable about your food supply, and having the basics to survive, the king takes too many resources to make, for very little reward, specially early game.
• Should I rush merms?: Yes definitely, but not  an outstanding number, at least not as soon as you start. The first times I played  Wurt I tried to set up like 15 merms as fast as I could and found the work too overwhelming and boring.
  I now just rush to have at least 1 to 3 craftsmerm houses as soon as possible, next to my base, which is not too time consuming, and they are enough to cover all your early game gathering needs. Early game they will act mostly like Maxwell's minions, they will help you hunt, and help you gather wood, gold and stone. So 2 or 3 are enough.
• Make my base at swamp or carry swamp to base?: I'd go with the latter. In the long term it's better to live wherever you feel more comfortable at, considering that you can just take the first marsh turf out of the marsh. You'll be spending some time in the marsh gathering resources anyway, but it's not necessarily the best place to live.
• Merm Tips (and general tips):
  
  Early Game: 
  Spoiler

  When you start the game you can hire the free merms that already live at swamp. Those are good enough to help you gather wood, stone and gold, so you start crafting your own merm houses and basic needs.
  Try to hoard all the berry bushes you find, early on, at least 25, and plant them where your base is going to be. You can also try to find/bring close to your base bunny hutches, for the carrots. These will be your early game bread and butter to survive most seasons, and not starve. You can then focus on having enough things to survive the winter, maybe make a few more "normal" merm houses, but don't go all the way with regular merms (I'd say 5-6 is the limit). When winter hits, you can then focus on getting your tam, cane, killing deerclops, etc.

  
  Past Early Game: 
  Spoiler

  Once you've covered most of your basic needs and you can basically survive indefinitely, then it's time to get merm serious. Get your boat and go looking for the moon island. Bring all the stuff you can, specially the kelp fronds and the stone fruit bushes. Now its time to set up your king, your drying racks (to dry kelp) and make the merms kill eachother for the fish every time they spawn. Trade the fish with the king until you start getting tentacle spots. Try to make a permanent stone fruits farm (growing from the seed)
  The merms can now start helping you open the stone fruits, which you can use to keep the merms working for you 24/7 (stone fruits produce a lot of vegetable food. 6 avocados will grant 2 full days of Merm friendship)
  Now with the tentacle spots, it's time to star crafting Warrior merms. Pick a nice spot away from base where you can cover them in flingo range, and start going bananas on crafting warrior merm houses. I got to have 30 in not much time. As you create more and more merms, make them kill eachother for the fish. Trade the fish with the king until you keep stockpiling tentacle spots. You can also take your warrior merms to kill tentacles.

  
  Late game:
  Spoiler

  Just go kill whatever you want with your merm army, and keep growing your permanent stone fruit farm as much as you can. Once you reach 25 warrior merm houses you can kill bee queen easily, stunlock dfly (although I strongly recommend to have a panflute anyway, and to circle all the lava ponds in walls so the merms don't burn) destroy any kind of hound wave, hunt vargs, etc. You now probably have enough resources to do the same underground too. I recommend making a king in the caves and a bit more merms (probably 40) which you can use to obliterate the ruins, or anything that gets in your way. Your main currency is going to be the stone fruits as these will allow you to keep hiring all the merms with little effort.

  
  Final tip: You should always carry a boomerang to cancel the attack animation, and command your army to attack from a distance.

[sinisterrkid]

Here are some tips to find the Lunar Island:

(You don't need to find them IMMEDIATELY, but getting there soon-ish to dig up stone fruit bushes and get kelp stalks will be a big plus. And hey, merms can help you chop the trees needed to build the boat)

 

[Mike23Ua]

I forgot a few things:

Expanding your swamp turf is not worth it, because the natural growing swamp resources that exist in a pre-existing swamp obviously won’t exist in a freshly built swamp your creating, all created swamp turf will do for you is provide the speed boost movement bonus, it won’t be already full of Merm shacks, tentacle, Spider dens etc..

You can befriend a Merm by not only giving them veggies, or bird seeds but by also giving them their own pet fish 

(which each dead Merm will drop when they go pick a fight with swamp tentacle) 

They will also drop Frog Legs.. but without Meat eating teammates in your game you don’t really need these (they do however help Wurt and Wigfrid be a great team)

Wurt has a “strong grip” perk which allows her tools to never slip out of her hands when they are wet- Meaning that if you had other players in the game with you, Wurt wouldn’t need the Eyebrella and can give that to someone who actually needs it.

if you choose NOT to create a Merm King your Merm Army will remain overly aggressive towards ANYTHING that enters your swamp that is not also Merm, When playing with other players Wurt can craft the Clever Disguise item to give to Non-Wurt players so that her Army does not maul them into oblivion.

And Lastly- Catcoons which are hostile towards Monster characters (Wortox and Webber) are actually peaceful to Wurt and will not attack her, so go enjoy their playful company  

 

[hoppin mandrake]

5 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

King- No, soon as you elect a king all your normally hostile Merms become peaceful.. strange trade-off that ain’t worth it.

I really don't get the Merm AI. Can someone lay it out for me? Do they aggro on hounds ever? Loyal Merm Guards seem to exist only if the king gets attacked or if you want to recruit 9 of them for whatever you want. Spiders seem so much more reliable than merms for aggroing on enemies.

[Intrepidpioneer]

I think wurt's playstyle is very give and take. She is able to produce a lot of meat passively from cleaning up swamp from merm/spider/tentacle wars as well as farm fish by actually fishing or merm on merm wars but she can't eat any of it, and others have a hard time living with her because merms are aggressive without king. So if you play with a worm wood there is great opportunity for synergy. Merm army is definitely worth it. It's one step away from anti grief robber ward  the merm king is worth it, but situationally. If you can get your hands on a handful of farms, stone fruit and bullkelp fronds wurt can live forever. If things are peaceful you can support the king and trade fish for goodies, any seeds you'd just grow and use rot to force-grow them fast. If things are dangerous, do not support the king and collect water balloons from mosquitoes to soak any intruders while merms attack them

[ShadowDuelist]

9 hours ago, hoppin mandrake said:

I really don't get the Merm AI. Can someone lay it out for me? Do they aggro on hounds ever? Loyal Merm Guards seem to exist only if the king gets attacked or if you want to recruit 9 of them for whatever you want. 

Their AI is tricky but you have to think that they are neither spiders nor bunnymen, so expect a different behavior.

Merms are actually neutral to most things, they are a bit territorial in a short range if the king is not present, and they are neutral towards everything (except pigs) with the king alive.

As a rule of thumb when playing as Wurt I consider them as how non heat beefalo behaves towards a player: its there, its threatening, but will not bother anything unless its attacked. When attacked they will defend eachother.

If you want to use them as a hound defense, just go next to them and either hide (bushhat, or snurtle armor) so the hounds have no target to pick and end up attacking the merms (again, they have herd mentality and will defend eachother) or run around the merms until the hounds slowly get distracted and bite the merms, exactly the same thing you would do with non-heat beefalos.

Befriended Merms will also not instantly protect you from anything, they just folllow you around. They will only attack something if they witness something hitting you (if you befriended them, they consider you part of the "herd". But if you didn't befriend them, they don't consider you as one of them. This is probably an oversight from the devs) and they will also attack if you command them to attack by attacking something yourself, or cancelling the attack animation towards something.

There is also another strange behavior that when they are your friends, the merms part of your personal army sometimes no longer defend echother. You may witness a hound biting a single merm of your team, and the others will just stare while he fights. You have to actively command them to attack it.

Regarding the royal merm guards, they only spawn when the king has very low hp, and dissaper once the king died. You can abuse it by letting the king starve and keep killing them for free fish, basically a single original merm gave you 5 or 6 merms worth of fish. They are not for using as your soldiers.

[Mysterious box]

I've got to admit for the ungodly amount of hours I've played wurt I never knew merm guards could kill dragonfly tho considering how often I've stun locked dfly I should have known.

Spoiler

Also merm guards who assist in killing dfly should get a purely cosmetic name change to loyal merm knight

 

[Sweaper]

make a boat near your base, put a fish bin on it, get 3-4 winter and summer fish, never worry about temperature again as wurt and if you don't mind low sanity you can use sunfish during spring to have all equipment slots free.

[Yuuko]

I like bringing the swamp with me because I like a central base location and the swamp is not always in the best spot.  If I got the right wormholes and map gen though I'd probably build near existing merm huts to give me a bit of a head start.  I like to have about 4 craftmerms early, but swamp merms are usually good enough.

I'd never rush king, Wurts stats are pretty okay without it, and setting up king eats resources and adds upkeep...  I pass on him early.

Definitely get to the lunar island and raid the bull kelps.  No fertilizer or disease and you get a good supply of vegies even in winter.  I play solo and lately I just set up the bull kelps for top side base and save the stonefruits for when I move into the cave in summer.

[Viktor234]

Two Crock Pot recipes you might want to know as Wurt:

• Butter Muffin: requires 1x Butterfly Wings, 2x Twigs, and 1x Any Vegetable, restores 20 Health, ~50 Hunger, 5 Sanity and perishes in 15 days
  It's a fairly cheap recipe which restores 20 Health and 66% of your daily Hunger. Its ingredients, Butterfly Wings, Twigs and Vegetables (which includes Carrots, Red Caps, Cactus Flesh, Kelp Fronds or Lichen) can be gathered easily while scouting the world. If you want to keep your Butterfly Wings fresh for longer you should consider catching the butterflies with a Bug Net instead of killing them and collecting wings. Especially when sailing around players should utilize this recipe since there are many Kelp Fronds available in the water.
• Fist Full of Jam: requires 3x Eggs and 1x Berries, restores 3 Health, ~50 Hunger, 5 Sanity and perishes in 15 days
  This recipe is one of the few ways where Wurt could utilize meat in the form of eggs in her diet. It restores 20% less hunger than Meatballs but lasts for 50% longer and can be made by using more than only one Monster Meat. Adding veggies to the ingredients will result in Ratatouille which restores 33% less hunger than Fist Full of Jam. This recipe isn't recommended if you neither want to use eggs in your recipe nor want to go on a journey, because 4x Cooked Berries restore more stats than this recipe (4x Cooked Berries: 4 Health, 66.5 Hunger; 4x Cooked Juicy Berries: 12 Health, 99.75 Hunger)

[Cr4zyFl4mes]

Deserts are not bad spots for Wurt base, cause cactus is growing all year round.