WX-78 rework concept!

[ArcerPL]

So, in my opinion, WX is kinda both broken and underpowered, let me explain, he has only one downside that is insanely easy to counter, that is beeing hurt by rain, not only the damage from it is slow as hell, it can be tottaly ignored with eyebrella, he is kind of underpowered on solo, but hes extremely broken with wickerbottom, in conclusion, he is wilson, but with only upsides. This idea however will change WX not only to be balanced, but fun as well!

 

I will break that into segments, because there's multiple upsides of wx that needs rebalancing, here's my view on them:

- Upgrade system - now instead of eating gears, WX will have new tab, instead of ability to eat gears, from now on wx will be able to upgrade himself in a different ways, because let's be fair, 400hp is a wee bit too op, and also lost potential. The upgrades will rely on clockworks, because hell, why nobody have thought of that when they are the main source of gears, as the regular, they will consume 15 gears to fully upgrade, lets talk abut upgrades then:

1) Accordion extension - This is the equivalent of our good ol' knight, it will extend our reach in fighting also giving us knockback mechanic, don't think it will make us fine and dandy while fighting, because the arms will always be on the view and monsters can destroy them, if they do destroy them, you can't hold anything, and only other characters can fix you with this, so this is high risk, high reward upgrade (if you want to avoid the team thing, just kill and ressurect yourself), the extend will be small however, but enough for example hitting a hound without getting chomped back, and knockback mechanic will only work when you are very close to the enemy. It will cost 5 gears to get this upgrade.

2) legs o' rook - you guessed it, this is rook counterpart of the upgrade, this will allow you not to only do the moose like charge of woody, but if you hit something, you loose health instead of beeing slowed down, it also wont allow you to get past through enemy, it will just attack single one, but with high damage. not only that, you will be able to do forge wolfgang-like jump but you can do that once every 2 days and will not do as big areal damage to enemies (more like wormwood spiky vest), it will allow you to get past through gaps though,you will also be slowed down like a reversed walking cane. His upgrade will consume 8 gears and 3 cut stone

3) Idea bulb - and you can probably guess who is the last on this list, bishop, the upgrade will be most pricy one because you may use 2 gears for that, but in advance you need 2 purple gems and 5 moonglass. Said its pricey, but for the payoff, you will be able to do ranged attack as long as you dont get hit enough to get it destroyed, not wearing any hats (it will destroy hats a bit if trying to shoot in them), or get struck by lightning making it 'explode', bruh you have bulb on your head (though you can fix yourself with moonglass with the lightning one). The ranged attack will be somewhat simmiliar to bishop, but far weaker and less accurate, though you can point where you want to shoot, be wise with that, you need to charge yourself to shoot, and to charge yourself, you need a charged lightning rod and touch it (one charged lightning rod = 3 shots, you can stack up to 15, after that, your bulb head will explode, but with ability to fix it with moonglass) it deals 60 damage per hit, but you can aim anywhere instead of the need to point at enemy, so in this case, you need prediction more than ctrl+f. To boost the accuracy, damage and projectile speed however you will need to right click yourself and do a crabby hermit house repair thingy, you will most likely use more gears, purple gems and maybe even wires because it makes sense for robotic character.

ok, so the upgrade idea is done, all of them will give you small stat boost, idea bulb mostly in sanity, leg o'rook in health and accordion extension nothing much, just small all stats up, let's get to WX when he's overcharged

WX after beeing struck by lightning should chop, mine and pick things faster, but not beeing insanely fast, not only that, his overcharged meter should be visible, he can be charged by charged lightning rods (so as do math says, he have 150points in his charge meter from the bulb idea). The overcharge should not give you speed of beeing way faster than beefalo with a type of rider (he has 9 run speed points compared to rider beefalo 8), his speed should be reduced to beefalo rider speed and also ingoring every item that gives you bonus speed, so no roads and walking canes will give you unhealthy speed, it's maybe a party pooper idea, but combine walking cane, road, overcharged WX, magiluminescence and you have 9 run speed + 75% of it, tell me about beyond broken speed (at least roads and walking canes are easy to get, so its still 55%).

Also the perk of not beeing a picky eater should extend to eating monster meat, he's a robot, not a human, his health and sanity shouldn't go down after eating something what he shouldn't, same with red caps, it won't lover his hp, he has no digestive system to begin with, so also healing items besides salves and poultice won't heal him, but to make game harder, he still has to eat.

ok so we got 2 main upsides of WX, but where is his downside? his main one is a literal joke, let me tell you about something way more painful than beeing hurt 1 damage per year from rain:

- STUPID RUSTING GEARS - not only WX crafting will be an upgrade, he will be able to make oil from bone shards (aka fossil replacement) that he needs to apply every 2 days at least once, that is if you don't oil yourself, you will be litteraly 'frozen' making you collapse on the ground and it will freeze you for 5 seconds, if you keep ignoring that, it will be up to 20 seconds, you will guess you're rusting by sounds of scrape of metal when walking, not only that, you will walk slower if you ignore that. that makes skeletons useful as hell for wx, but since we don't have infinite source of bones in don't starve, they should drop from eating raw big meat, because you can literally see a bone sticking out from it, also it gives you a penalty of sanity, so it's not bad and is a not that broken-easy bone source. It'll ignore only first 7 days, then it will be your burden. Rain instead of hurting you, will speed up this process to 6 times faster (aka it either affects the first day making you need to oil 3 times every day or 6 times per 2 days if we stay at 2 day rule, but first makes more sense) thus you need good amount of bones, and it will surely affect you if you forget bones with eyebrella, making it truly a great, balanced and logical downside.

[Dragolantis]

I'm surprised that nobody has commented on this! You have some good ideas in here, such as the rusting downside and the upgrades mechanic changes. But I do thing that most, if not all of them are overpowered in their abilities, and underpowered in stats. With the current upgrade mechanic, you need to eat 15 gears to reach max stats, and I know 400 health is OP, but think about it. 15 gears is a lot just to reach max stats, especially since you only recieve a fraction of the gears you ate when you die. Gears are only renewable by resetting the ruins to my knowledge, and that can only be done through killing the ancient fuelweaver. Then, you have to realize, that there aren't many clockworks running around on the forest shard, meaning, for those with caves off, max stats WX is darn near impossible. Not to mention, that you need gears for other important things, such as the ice box or flingomatic. I do agree that the upgrading system should be different than just eating gears, but all the abilities you proposed are completely overpowered. With the accordion arm, you can kill weak to even somewhat difficult mobs, like hounds, with no risk of damage at all, not to mention, bosses would totally destroy the attachment with the info on it you gave me, getting rid of your most useful, sometimes essential equipment slot in the game, until someone else helps you or you die. and when someone helps you, you still have the attachment! People playing on servers by themselves are absolutely screwed if they get this attachment, losing their most important slot, and likely needing to find a touch stone or life-giving amulet. The Rook feet is actually underpowered if you consider it, not only do you have to gather 8 GEARS which is monumental, as I said previously, and while 60 damage for the charge is really good the slam is extremely underpowered. The slam deals only 22 damage and can only be done once every 2 days? I'd expect these 2 to be switched, making the charge do 22, and the slam do 60. I don't think you realized the issue with the rook feet and I'd say it's the closest to balanced if you made the charge 22 and the slam 60 like I said. The bishop hat gets way too much attention. The bishop hat is somewhat balanced doing 60 damage but you need to stock up on charges from lightning rods, and the price is justified, but where it starts to get nuts is the upgrading of an upgrade. Not only do the other upgrades not have the ability to be upgraded, the RANGED attack does as much as the rook feet's charge and can be upgraded to  do MORE DAMAGE, be SUPER ACCURATE, and GO LIGHTNING FAST for just a few more gears, purple gems, and moonglass. All of which (Minus the gears) are easy to get or just plain regenerate, but having 60 DAMAGE as the low point for this upgrade, while the rook feet's slam does 22, that just screams broken.

 

Sorry for the extreme rambling, I just wanted to get my thoughts across.

- Dragolantis

[AileTheAlien]

I kind of feel like having three different combat upgrades might be both overpowered, and overly complex. Like, if you're using the ranged attack, you don't really need the other ones, or you could choose to keep the rook-charge attack, but not use the laser. Plus, he's a robot - if anyone should have a wide range of possible upgrades, it's this character! Now to finish my own thread, because I'm a massive nerd...  : )