My Opinions About Wickerbottom

[.]

Yes, I know they said they are gonna fix her but just want to say something.

   Wickerbottom is one of the most interesting character (She didn't even get rework but she's still perfect). I really understand people want to nerf her because she is so strong. That's right, she is so strong but she is still one of the hardest character to play with it for news, because sanity system is really rare mechanic in games (which makes it really hard for first playing) and new players trying to keep sanity full while playing with characters. They are a little right bc it's not that easy to keep it full. The easiest way to full sanity is sleeping and news using it so much.
But veteran players know how sanity is easy to handle and most of good players don't have over %60 sanity at all. The only thing that annoying experinced players is sound effect of insanity (which they disable it with client mods). I usually use mushrooms, cactus and hats (or killing shadow creatures) to handle my sanity because sleeping is waste of time.

   Taking powers from character is never welcome for me. No matter what is it. I really hate when reworks change characters at all. I really didn't like Woodie rework, not because he is stronger (All reworks make characters stronger), I talk about curse mechanics. It's totally not a curse. Werecurses must be annoying, they should pop up in anormal times and make us to have to be carefull about it. But woodie rework make him basicly a wizard. He turns whatever he wants and this curses are like british army knife. He turns Werebeaver when needs wood and stone, turns weregoose when needs wander around and he turns weremoose when need to fight. He don't does these jobs because he turn them, he turn them because he want to do these jobs.

   About Wickerbottom, like I said before She is a 20th centuary witch. She probably learned those things from forgotten places, temples and maybe from demons. She use his powers by cost of sanity because those are terrifying knowledges. If you know the lovecraftian things, you know what I mean. Maybe that's why only she and maxwell can read it because they are both saw terrifying things. Except Wurt, she is a dumb, who just looking pictures and don't understand. I'm telling this because I saw few persons saying Wormwood should take those powers. No, wormwood should not. Wormwood is just a plant. Does it make sense to a plant grow another plant with no magic? Aplied Horticulture is best and most usefull book of Wickerbottom. Other ones is usable for few things like traps, emergency meat/soul, boss fight and overcharing. Removing or nerfing this book like that will kill Wickerbottom. There will be really no reason to use her again.

So what Klei should do? Probably they finished her and waiting right time to share but I just wanted to share my ideas.

-New shared book recipe is fine. Maybe they can make cost a little higher. (But it's fine for now)
-Aplied Horticulture should effect 15 or 20 PLANTED PLANTS (farms) on screen which nearest to reader.
-Aplied Horticulture should effect other plants same. Full grown plant's should not be effected by it, including trees too.
-Should not be able to use if sanity is lower than cost. I mean if you want o read "on tentacles", you should have over 50 sanity.

   These are only thing I want to be change before rework. But next updates must be about sanity. That's probably would best and most satisfying way to nerf her. Making sanity mechanics harder will make her harder to play and her insomnia will be a real downside. She will be still good for veterans and more terrifying for news.

That was all. Thanks, if you read all of it and sorry for my english if it's annoyed you  

 

 

 

[minespatch]

9 hours ago, Slagger said:

sorry for my english if it's annoyed you  

It looks pretty legible to me.

[TheGoldenDonut_]

What is that white box?

[ryvrdrgn14]

I'll be happy if they just make the sanity cost of reading books a hard requirement. This eliminates 'freecasting' Wickerbottoms who aren't afraid of insanity and shadow creatures. If they implement this, Wickerbottom will now need a lot of sanity food to spam her books.

This won't only address crop or lichen farms, but also bird farming. It won't affect tentacles much since you can build those death traps over time and they stay for a long while. It'll also put more value on sanity restoration for Wicker players or groups that want their Wicker to spam stuff.

[Mike23Ua]

I’m going to reserve my judgement on Wicker Changes until her Rework, I only hope she gets something a little more in-depth than Warly or Wigfrids Rework, I absolutely loved Winona, Wendy, Willow and Woodies Reworks, I hope the remaining reworks get new unique interesting gameplay.  

Wickerbottoms book nerf may just be to balance whatever refresh abilities shes getting once the rework arrives.

[.]

4 hours ago, TheGoldenDonut_ said:

What is that white box?

I don't know. Really, what is that?

[bob yeets]

wickerbottom should get books easier as I am yet to find a marshland for reeds and papyrus

 

[Toros]

The claim that wicker is hard even for noobs is dubious.

13 hours ago, bob yeets said:

wickerbottom should get books easier as I am yet to find a marshland for reeds and papyrus

 

This is why it’s standard practice to outline the map in the first 7-10 days, while gathering the necessary resources to set up your base.

Wicker was S tier and remains S tier still.  Fast tech lets her rapidly get set up and many of her books have powerful uses.  She also has no meaningful downsides.

[Picklesaurus]

1 hour ago, Toros said:

The claim that wicker is hard even for noobs is dubious.

This is why it’s standard practice to outline the map in the first 7-10 days, while gathering the necessary resources to set up your base.

Wicker was S tier and remains S tier still.  Fast tech lets her rapidly get set up and many of her books have powerful uses.  She also has no meaningful downsides.

Everybody knows wicker is a difficult character for seasoned veterans only.
If you aren't a veteran you wouldn't know that she is capable of producing 1200 basic resources by the first spring after killing one treeguard, digging 40 plants (20 grass turf + 20 sapplings), gathering 120 manures and getting 12 papyrus. 
Forget wormwood's, wurt's, warly's or walter's downsides, not being able to sleep and being able to only eat fresh food is the real downside that differentiates the veterans from the new players.
 

[Toros]

10 minutes ago, Picklesaurus said:

Everybody knows wicker is a difficult character for seasoned veterans only.
If you aren't a veteran you wouldn't know that she is capable of producing 1200 basic resources by the first spring after killing one treeguard, digging 40 plants (20 grass turf + 20 sapplings), gathering 120 manures and getting 12 papyrus. 
Forget wormwood's, wurt's, warly's or walter's downsides, not being able to sleep and being able to only eat fresh food is the real downside that differentiates the veterans from the new players.
 

...Wicker isn’t a difficult character for new players or for veterans though.  She has easy access to tech to get early armor and tools, spoiled and stale food are awful for everyone but wx anyway, and lack of sleeping is not a big deal at all.

Wicker definitely does better in a skilled player’s hands, but she’s an easy character to play at every skill level.

If she had a meaningful downside she’d probably be balanced, but she doesn’t.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

5 hours ago, Picklesaurus said:

Everybody knows wicker is a difficult character for seasoned veterans only.
If you aren't a veteran you wouldn't know that she is capable of producing 1200 basic resources by the first spring after killing one treeguard, digging 40 plants (20 grass turf + 20 sapplings), gathering 120 manures and getting 12 papyrus. 
Forget wormwood's, wurt's, warly's or walter's downsides, not being able to sleep and being able to only eat fresh food is the real downside that differentiates the veterans from the new players.
 

Sarcasm?

[QuartzBeam]

51 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Sarcasm?

Oh, you sweet summer child...

[MondayNight]

I don't understand even after all this time of being on these forums why some people like so much to exaggerate on constant base (for some probably is the upper-high Dunning-Kruger effect limit coupled with playing DST alone or with only 2-3 advanced friends; for others I suspect exaggeration for the sake of it or for false bragging purpose). Wickerbottom's cons, namely inability to sleep coupled with her large sanity pool (250) means an equally large margin in which she is insane (<37.5) aka more sanity required to get out of its "danger zone". For bulk player-base (newbies/noobs/cauals) such combination mostly equals perma-insanity and inevitable death by Shadow Monsters, more so as tier 1 builds actually becomes weight here in lack of research sanity. If one frequents pubs this aspect becomes evident. Writing "she’s an easy character to play at every skill level" is blatantly false and every pub-dive shows it. As a constant KLei official servers dweller I can see by now a meme out of "Insane Wicker getting mushed by Shadows for the N+1 time": happens almost every run. Likewise looking at server popularity pickings in general, one can see Wicker is actually a mid-tier choice, even Winona being more popular atm. In fact most servers are full of Wendies, Wigfrids and Wilsons (understandable, being default) - characters either with obvious, very useful pros and/or minimal cons. And even for them insanity isn't a "non issue" - perhaps was the case in past, with unloading of Shadows via Wormhole jumping for example. But now you got obligatory constant Shadows fights if staying insane, and in pub setting the one player going insane first has to deal not only with his/hers 2 shadows, but other people's too. Thus pls abstain a lil bit from these exaggerations, Wicker or Insanity aren't "trivial matters", at least not for vast majority of players, aka non-experienced ones without N k play hours. More so if they play pubs as well. Plus character difficulty across the board shouldn't be centered around experienced players' handling, but considering every level - aka a mid-ground approach.

 

Regarding Wicker's nerfs, seems was bound to happen. I have no strong feelings regarding it. But I can see how KLei tries to "slowly boil the frog" with punctual character nerfs in scenarios outside of main character reworks, at least for now and this case. And is frankly amusing for yours truly. For the most I don't care about strict mechanical balance as DST isn't a competitive game and all characters don't need to be on same level or even strictly balanced on their own. "Good enough" balance is.. good enough. And if anything, past reworked characters actually brought buffs, 0 "meaningful" cons. And they're still, or rather even more, fun. For Wicker is my opinion that only hard nerf she should get is the inability to further read books when reaching 0 Sanity. That's it. Further books tweaks or re-renderings? Maybe. We'll see when it happens.

[ADM]

I don't know how good would that be or straight useless, but maybe what Wicker needs for now is a book that has no effect but regenerate sanity ?

[Well-met]

1 hour ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

I don't understand even after all this time of being on these forums why some people like so much to exaggerate on constant base (for some probably is the upper-high Dunning-Kruger effect limit coupled with playing DST alone or with only 2-3 advanced friends; for others I suspect exaggeration for the sake of it or for false bragging purpose). Wickerbottom's cons, namely inability to sleep coupled with her large sanity pool (250) means an equally large margin in which she is insane (<37.5) aka more sanity required to get out of its "danger zone". For bulk player-base (newbies/noobs/cauals) such combination mostly equals perma-insanity and inevitable death by Shadow Monsters, more so as tier 1 builds actually becomes weight here in lack of research sanity. If one frequents pubs this aspect becomes evident. Writing "she’s an easy character to play at every skill level" is blatantly false and every pub-dive shows it. As a constant KLei official servers dweller I can see by now a meme out of "Insane Wicker getting mushed by Shadows for the N+1 time": happens almost every run. Likewise looking at server popularity pickings in general, one can see Wicker is actually a mid-tier choice, even Winona being more popular atm. In fact most servers are full of Wendies, Wigfrids and Wilsons (understandable, being default) - characters either with obvious, very useful pros and/or minimal cons. And even for them insanity isn't a "non issue" - perhaps was the case in past, with unloading of Shadows via Wormhole jumping for example. But now you got obligatory constant Shadows fights if staying insane, and in pub setting the one player going insane first has to deal not only with his/hers 2 shadows, but other people's too. Thus pls abstain a lil bit from these exaggerations, Wicker or Insanity aren't "trivial matters", at least not for vast majority of players, aka non-experienced ones without N k play hours. More so if they play pubs as well. Plus character difficulty across the board shouldn't be centered around experienced players' handling, but considering every level - aka a mid-ground approach.

 

Regarding Wicker's nerfs, seems was bound to happen. I have no strong feelings regarding it. But I can see how KLei tries to "slowly boil the frog" with punctual character nerfs in scenarios outside of main character reworks, at least for now and this case. And is frankly amusing for yours truly. For the most I don't care about strict mechanical balance as DST isn't a competitive game and all characters don't need to be on same level or even strictly balanced on their own. "Good enough" balance is.. good enough. And if anything, past reworked characters actually brought buffs, 0 "meaningful" cons. And they're still, or rather even more, fun. For Wicker is my opinion that only hard nerf she should get is the inability to further read books when reaching 0 Sanity. That's it. Further books tweaks or re-renderings? Maybe. We'll see when it happens.

to be honest if your reach as a player does not go beyond the ability to fight off crawling horrors, I don't think that's any concern to do with wickerbottom. Playing the game bad does not justify easily avoidable downsides.

new players learn with mistakes, deaths and time. It's an automated process that happens even when your game has no direct tips or tutorials. Everyone sucked on their first experiences and that's just fine. Friends will help out and more ressourceful folks will find their way to the wiki.

If you truly want to design a videogame around challenges and trade-offs (which Klei clearly has shown since the beginning), it's important to know what the better part of the playerbase can do with the tools you put at their disposal. Average-to-good players thrive and throw many challenges out of the window with Wickerbottom at no cost, which contradicts the design Klei is going for and at the end of the day that's the only thing that matters.

[Picklesaurus]

2 hours ago, ADM said:

I don't know how good would that be or straight useless, but maybe what Wicker needs for now is a book that has no effect but regenerate sanity ?

A book like this would be fine when coupled with the sanity hard requirement suggested by ryvrdrgn14 as means of balacing wicker's capabilities if they want her - after her refresh - to have more things than she currently does.

On 11/30/2020 at 11:54 PM, ryvrdrgn14 said:

I'll be happy if they just make the sanity cost of reading books a hard requirement. This eliminates 'freecasting' Wickerbottoms who aren't afraid of insanity and shadow creatures. If they implement this, Wickerbottom will now need a lot of sanity food to spam her books.

The thing is: I don't know how much people would use a book like this, even if an added sanity hard requirement would be added, people would just stick to cactus/green cap unless the book was bonkers and exploitable please no. That said, if they could make such a book give a buff after a reading that regenates sanity not instantly but overtime... it would be a fine book to help new players overcome one of her weakness and not everything needs to be super useful, being fun or a novelty is fine as well. Your idea is more interesting than I first thought @ADM. I'm curious about what would be the name/title of a book like this, what sort of reading would make wicker regen sanity?