Winona is surprisingly strong

[clickrush]

I just did a short run as Warly with a friend. He didn't play for quite a while too, so I suggested he might look at Winona and try her new catapults out. When we played a couple of years ago we mostly picked Wicker+Wolfgang/WX, never made large bases, just small utility focused one and went on hunting down bosses and spelunking. We figured we try something else and do a bit of a chill, chaotic run, while trying some new features and stuff.

We based pretty close to Bee Queen so we figured we should try catapults on her. It was already late and we wanted to log off soonish so we YOLOed with super minimal prep, almost no healing foods, no wall to kite the small bees, our hambats were not fresh anymore etc, so we didn't expect to survive the fight, and obviously didn't.

Now what surprised us is that her catapults actually did some good work during the fight. They were pretty cheap to make and did short work of the small bees rather quickly, probably because of the AoE. He put down 5 of them I think and one generator. Another surprise: The monsters didn't attack the catapults so we just kited the small bees into the cross fire and they died off rather quickly.

I think those things are super useful for that specific fight, maybe for Dragonfly too and possibly other monsters and bosses that you spawn at a specific place such as Fuelweaver, maybe Toadstool, one of these huge spider infested areas, you get the drift. They aren't as expensive and slow to make as Shootius, but rather cheap for what they provide.

Winona as a character seems to be in a very good place now, she has a very small, negligible downside, so she is easy to pick up and play for new players. Her catapults are attractive for new players who want more protection or for more experienced ones who want to prepare effectively for some of the harder bosses. Cool stuff!

[HowlVoid]

Small tip very first boss to set up catapults at is dragonfly. If you place some walls where larvae will get stuck, an ice fllingomatic, and some burnables so the fligo targets the larvae you will get about 3 catapults worth of rocks every fight. 

3 is my magic number and about the number of catapults I will set up at various boss locations early game. 

Plus the gems from the boss.

[Owlrust]

24 minutes ago, clickrush said:

Her catapults are attractive

Unfortunately that's kinda the problem with her though. Her catapults are amazing...so amazing in fact that people often just switch to her and back because the generators work with any character; all you need her for is to place them.

A lot of the upsides she has are either not exclusive to playing her or come with larger downsides, which tends to put her on the back-burner. No real reason to play Wendy when you could use Abigail as Wolfgang so to speak. So imo at least, her catapults are surprisingly strong; not her.

[Cheggf]

Of course she's strong, she's a hard worker. Factory work'll build muscles.

[clickrush]

8 hours ago, Owlrus said:

Unfortunately that's kinda the problem with her though. Her catapults are amazing...so amazing in fact that people often just switch to her and back because the generators work with any character; all you need her for is to place them.

A lot of the upsides she has are either not exclusive to playing her or come with larger downsides, which tends to put her on the back-burner. No real reason to play Wendy when you could use Abigail as Wolfgang so to speak. So imo at least, her catapults are surprisingly strong; not her.

I just never character swap. I pick one and stick with it. I feel it’s more flavorful that way and swapping seems cumbersome. But if people like doing it I don’t mind either!

[ArubaroBeefalo]

I wish she has something more. Just 4 structures: 2 generators, a weak light source and cathapults plus patches, nothing else

[Captain_Rage]

Her trusty tape is useful for repairing boats as well. Winona definitely has her perks.

[clickrush]

1 hour ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

I wish she has something more. Just 4 structures: 2 generators, a weak light source and cathapults plus patches, nothing else

Catapults are uniquely powerful and I feel like with her negligible downside and these, she is already a powerful character. If anything her light source is what could be more efficient, since the standard options such as lanterns, firepits etc. are just less of a hassle and require cheaper fuel.

In terms of general game balance I feel like some of the weaker features could be made more efficient to provide more variety. This warrants a different thread though.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

12 minutes ago, clickrush said:

Catapults are uniquely powerful and I feel like with her negligible downside and these, she is already a powerful character. If anything her light source is what could be more efficient, since the standard options such as lanterns, firepits etc. are just less of a hassle and require cheaper fuel.

In terms of general game balance I feel like some of the weaker features could be made more efficient to provide more variety. This warrants a different thread though.

She is just a wilson with cheese cathapults. Strong? Yes. Interesting? Not at all

[a bin of cake]

Just now, ArubaroBeefalo said:

She is just a wilson with cheese cathapults. Strong? Yes. Interesting? Not at all

I mean... gameplay-wise, I can’t disagree. I initially chose Winona when I first played DST for the mere reason that she and her perks & quirks looked underwhelming (I didn’t choose Wilson because my other friends with whom I was playing had already chosen him).

[Maxil20]

I always liked Winona in terms of gameplay. She won’t spawn in and magically make any threat ever implode and be removed from existence, but I do think her perks are alright.

• 2X crafting speed from crating is a very underrated perk, especially for lategame. You are going to constantly refine items in order to build structures (spoiler alert: boards are absolutely #1 for this). Being able to bulk craft thousands of items can easily save a substantial amount of time compared to crafting them as another character, especially since the initial hunger penalty only applies to the first craft in a session and you won’t craft slower until ~10 minutes elapse, saving you needing to eat to keep crafting.
• Trusty tape is also a fairly good craft from Winona. It’s basically a discount sewing kit + boat patch. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it also happens that both are basically going to be used throughout the entire game, and having cheaper alternatives will cut down on costs. Tape alone is really good for clothing (a full stack heals a massive 200 days of constant clothing usage) and is an exceptional boat patch alternative if the healing from the patch is also not required simultaneously (which really only occurs with crab king).
• Catapults are an exceptional defense/offense. Even if character swapping exists, Winona by herself can rival almost any setup that is done by other characters, especially in terms of effort. AOE + good damage basically seals any raid boss away that isn’t ridiculously potent and/or gets massively powered up if the minions die (such as klaus).

If anything, my main gripe is that Winona’s refresh doesn’t feel as high effort as something like Woodie’s/Wendy’s, which admittedly is pretty understandable given she was the first refresh. I do wish she got reworked again to get some more unique structures, especially since she only has two that are functional, and one is questionable at best. Other then that though, I think she is certainly playable, and I can see why people would use her.

[JWalker1311]

Megabasers switch to winona not for building catapults but producing cobblestone in heaps very very fast. So she's not wilson with catapults. Her trusty tape is incredible too. 
Another tip is to build her lamp 1 each in whatever catapult set up you do. It will activate on its own when you use gems for the catapult and unlike starcaller light, it wont burn the catapults.

Also, use her nitre generator for farms. Because you have basically nothing to do except aggro the mob into statues/fossils, you might as well feed nitre into the generators. I use it for treeguards, bunnymen and merms.