(RANT) - My problems with recent characters

[Baark0]

So Klei's been pumping out character reworks and new characters for 2-3 years now, and I've just wanted to share some of my gripes with said reworks.

 

Let's start with Winona. When Winona first got reworked, everyone saw it as a good rework, she had unique structures that allowed you to do a number of things, from farming vargs, pigs, bunnymen, and help out with bosses, namely the bee queen. Then character swapping became a thing. Suddenly, Winona is now one of the worst characters, due to the fact all of her perks are craftable items that function without her in the world. You don't need a Winona to power her generators, or to operate her machines, so there's no reason to play her outside of the few days you spend building her structures.

Next up is Wortox. I don't have any problems with him, he's very strong, and you need him around to get value out of his perks. Good stuff.

After Wortox we got a Willow rework, which was also pretty good. It gave her fire immunity back, removed her horrible downside of freezing when cold, and gave her a unique mechanic in Bernie's insane form. Only problem I have with this rework is Willow no longer having a notable downside, since freezing hasn't been an issue in forever.

Wormwood falls into a category of character's who's main perk is a crafting tab, and unfortunately for Wormwood, his crafting tab is crafted items that can be used by any character, namely, the living logs. Due to this, Wormwood is frequently used as a living log machine, before he is swapped out for someone with useful perks. He does have some other small upsides, such as blooming, that can make playing as him worth it.

I don't have much to say about Wormwood, but I would like to talk about Warly. He's by far one of the best made characters in DST. He's got strong upsides, a notable and gameplay defining downside, and his personality is also unique and fun to play as. Some people think his downside is terrible and hard to deal with, to those people, just eat 2 meaty stew when your hunger hits 0, it's not that hard. As for healing and sanity, you'll have to find other ways to restore them. It's just a shame that there's no reason to play him due to the fact that pretty much all of his upsides you can have while playing a different character, thanks to bundles.

Next we have Woodie. Woodie's rework fixed his horrible log meter mechanic and gave him new forms, which turned him from a gatherer into a generalist. Unfortunately, Klei neglected to give him a downside, and instead gave him a sorry excuse of a downside, that being him having 0 hunger when transforming back into his human form. This is a really lazy downside, and doesn't change his playstyle from that of Wilson at all.

Wurt is a character I have many problems with. Her downside of being vegan is a good downside, similar to Wigfrid, forcing you to find new options for healing/sanity/hunger, but with Wurt it's even bigger of an issue since most players tend to have a very meat heavy diet.  Her other downside of being a merm is fine, except for the fact that she can't trade with the pig king. I get that it's meant to be a multiplayer game, so you can have other people trade with the king, but if that's the case, why is Webber able to trade with the king? Webber is a spider, which the pigs actively see as threats, unlike merms who they just hate. Wurt's upsides are also problematic, for the same reason as Winona. Wurt's "main upside" is craftable structures, which as we've seen with Winona, ends up making a character not very useful, albeit with Wurt, to a lesser extent. I've seen people say merms are Wurt's upside, to which I don't fully agree. Sure, merms make for good minions, but I quite literally only use minions against bee queen, and bunnies do the job just as well as merms. Sure, they can gather without panicking at night, but you know who else can? Bearger, maxwell's shadows, and those 2 both work for free, and starting merm wars isn't very lucrative in a solo experience either, as Wurt can't even eat the merm drops. Even in a multiplayer environment, you can just have a WInona craft a couple of catapults and use those to farm merms. At least she's cute?

I'm pretty sure Wendy was the next character to get a rework, and it's a pretty good one. Wendy got more control over Abigail, which is all that was really needed but she also ended up getting a 1.5x damage modifier when fighting with Abigail, and Abigail got a brief invincibility shield when she got hit. The whole ectoherbology tab isn't terrible, but it's a pain to farm for, and the only boss I even really used potions on was Bee Queen.

Walter is also problematic, simply due to the fact that he doesn't really have anything going for him. Sure you can get some niche uses out of Woby and his slingshot, but are they really anything you can't do with another character? His downside is fine, I guess, not very interesting but I mean at least he has one.

Finally we have Wigfrid. Her rework felt very safe, I'd hardly call it a rework, more of a buff. Safe doesn't mean bad though, her rework simply gave her new skills that she can cast if he fights things for long enough. This pretty much only has an effect during boss fights, but the rework is good. Also I'm not talking about Wes since he's basically still the same challenge character.

You'll notice how many character's "rework" or "main perk" has simply been the addition of a crafting tab. Sure in some cases like Wigfrid it can work, but other times you get characters like Winona and Wurt. Next rework is Webber, and from his idle animation, I wouldn't be surprised if his rework is also a crafting tab. Sure crafting tabs aren't the worst thing out there, but they're not very interesting, I mean look at Wortox, he doesn't have a crafting tab and is still a good fun character. Another good example of a crafting tab character is Maxwell, his tab is really more of a summoning menu than an actual crafting tab since you actually need Maxwell to be around in order to make use of his perks. I really wish Klei was more creative with some characters, and didn't just give every character a crafting tab. Sure, they're not a bad thing, but I'm kinda sick of seeing a cool looking character, only to find out their main perk is that they can craft something, only to then swap them out for a different character who's perk isn't just a menu.

That's just how I feel about Klei's recent approach to character reworks and new characters. I just want some variety, here's to hoping the new character coming this year doesn't fall into the same hole as the others.

[W0l0l0]

6 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

 downside of freezing when cold

I know this is an honest mistake, but it gave me a chuckle.

About everything else, yeah probably. I wish Woodie had a downside and I wish Lucy had more utility that made her worth keeping around in the inventory (I saw a mod that made Woodie have longer transformations when she's on the floor nearby, which sounds awesome). I want to stress that Woodie's forms are really well done, with good risk/reward ratio and especially the moose. It feels strong and is a lot of fun without being overpowered. I wish Beaver and goose were better for beyond early game, (I don't find enough reason to use beaver at all which is a shame) because Woodie seems to lack late game relevance, but he's in a decent spot. I like downsides, especially interesting ones, so I definitely agree with you there. 

[QuartzBeam]

18 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

Wormwood falls into a category of character's who's main perk is a crafting tab, and unfortunately for Wormwood, his crafting tab is crafted items that can be used by any character, namely, the living logs. Due to this, Wormwood is frequently used as a living log machine, before he is swapped out for someone with useful perks. He does have some other small upsides, such as blooming, that can make playing as him worth it.

Wormwood's crafts are pretty low on his list of downsides. Meanwhile, that "small" blooming perk of his allows him to have a virtually free 20% speed boost year round, which combines with his cheap dark swords to make him a surprisingly good combat character. Oh, yeah, and he is miles beyond everyone else when it comes to farming, as he can literally plant and harvest hundreds of crops at once without any maintenance.

 

21 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

Wurt is a character I have many problems with. Her downside of being vegan is a good downside, similar to Wigfrid, forcing you to find new options for healing/sanity/hunger, but with Wurt it's even bigger of an issue since most players tend to have a very meat heavy diet. 

I'm getting the impression that you somehow missed the Reap What You Sow update, which made farm crops into one of the best food sources in the game.

[Tuesday Pidgeon]

46 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

I get that it's meant to be a multiplayer game, so you can have other people trade with the king, but if that's the case, why is Webber able to trade with the king? Webber is a spider, which the pigs actively see as threats, unlike merms who they just hate. 

Pigs generally hate all monsters, but I'm pretty sure the relationship between pigs and merms is deeper than pigs and merms just disliking eachother because one is a monster.

It seems as though pigs and merms are in a war of sorts, with pig heads in the swamp and merm heads in pig villages. Heck, there's also a set piece where it's just a handful of merms and pigs just fighting.

Perhaps Wurt doesn't want to trade with the PK out of principle due to said war? She seems to hate pigs the most out of all the other monster characters.

[Zeklo]

I don't consider myself to be an exceptionally good player at the game so I'm baffled people find Wurt's vegetarian downside troublesome. Her innate +33% Hunger from fruits/veggies makes the downside basically non-existent, and this was before Reap What You Sow—now she's one of the easiest stomachs to manage.

I admit she's a bit all over the place in the sense that she has a lot going for her. Her stats are pretty good with the Merm King. She has fairly easy sanity management due to pet fish—this also let's her reap the rewards out of temperature-fish more (which are fun alternatives). She can get an extra free speed boost due to swamp turf. Naturally she has merms that can harvest & fight—and they're basically free once you setup a proper infrastructure. She can technically be a pick and swap, but there's little reason to. Merm Guards are only marginally better than Bunnymen. It's not such a huge gap in power that you'd go to such an extent to bundle disguises or something.

I'd say the only 'issue' (apart from merm AI) with Wurt is that she's a late-game character. She's not instantly good. She needs setup.

Oh—and it's true Pig King is willing to trade with monsters. The reasons Wurt can't trade is because she herself refuses to.
She hates pigs.

[piratekingflcl]

Having characters that you can switch out of while using their powers to benefit the next gal or guy who comes along is a very Don't Starve thing though, even from back in the original game. I disagree that the ability for people to do all these things are good reasons for not playing a character - when it's a completely optional part of the game, and you aren't forced in any way to utilize it.

If I want to play Wurt or Winona or Warly, I can play them because I like their voice/quotes/outfits, not necessarily because I'm concerned with what their crafting tabs give; but if I did decide that I just wanted their crafting recipes in my world for a different character, I also have that option.

Should the player's ability to make those choices be more limited to protect the integrity of character balance? Should the focus be on making a character that people like playing? Who exactly are the people that the character is trying to appeal to? How often will this specific thing affect the general playerbase, many of whom probably won't ever change their character with the celestial portal in their entire time playing?

There's also going to be an inherent bias on these forums for players who invest a lot of their time into DST. So even if it might seem like everybody is switching characters in every other world on here, there's probably another, even larger part of the game's population who're still struggling to beat their first Dragonfly. For reference, the PS4 version's trophies for Don't Starve Together puts the number of players who've built a Science Machine at around 58%, and the number who've defeated a Deerclops at less than 8%.

(But please, Klei, choose Walani for the next character even if she's bad and nobody else likes her)

[HowlVoid]

Wormwood's crafting tab is probably one his weakest upsides. 

Wormwood is arguably the best non-combat oriented character and, in my opinion, the most comfortable character late game. He is easily the most self-sufficient character in the game.

Food? Place mushroom planters underneath sinkholes (Klei aboveground too plz) for non-perishable (in planter) red mushroom all throughout the year.   

Can any character eat red mushrooms? No. 

Sanity? Place a seed in the ground. Done.

Can other characters gain sanity this easily. No. Pines cones don't spoil btw.

Health? Turn excess grass and twigs into non spoiling quick hp. Can other characters rub doodoo on themselves to heal? No.

His blooming is not his only great upside.

Also he doesn't get attacked by bees but I'm not going to explain how op this is because I don't want Klei to nerf it... 

[Mike23Ua]

Did you read the games product description at all? Survival Crafting Game.. I for one want more crafting tabs, not just for characters but EVERYTHING.. 

if I build a new machine, it should have cool new craftables it’s as simple as that.

When you play a game like SMITE or Apex Legends you are locked to and defined by- The Character and The characters perks you choose.

DST is NOT a game like this because you CAN Swap characters.

(if I could play as Wraith and Swap to Caustic and back to Wraith.. there would be A LOT of gas traps dropped unexpectedly out of nowhere through void tunnels.)

Klei basically shot themselves in the foot by giving you the freedom to create a thing to swap characters....

And if they want my advice: there is this lovely little menu of things you can toggle on/off tons/less of..... Utilize it.

“Can Florid be Upgraded to Celestial Postern?” Yes/No/Random.

 

As far as “Downsides” go, who are you trying to kid?? Downsides have been disappearing with each rework.

Even WES has decent abilities for managing sanity, wetness & speed now.

The days of annoying harsh downsides are over and gone- and personally....?

I think it NEEDS to remain that way, characters should be easy to pick up and play as without additional frustrations from learning their downsides.

If you want to give them downsides maybe do that in a harder game mode reserved for it- But making characters easier to understand/play and enjoy can only help.. not hurt the game.

[CaptainChaotica]

1 hour ago, Baark0 said:

After Wortox we got a Willow rework, which was also pretty good. It gave her fire immunity back, removed her horrible downside of freezing when cold

Well okay while I get what you were going for here with the snarky wording, it was actually freezing while _insane_, and if you were being chased by something that has a sanity-lowering aura, _in winter_?  Yeah you'd DEFINITELY die faster.

Source:  Personal experience playing DST Willow in 2016.  It was after that when I downloaded and used my first mod, which in this case turned Willow back to her original DS self...COMPLETELY, including the random insantiy fires.  THAT was how annoying her nerfed version was.  I figured, _I_ was used to it and I was mainly gonna be playing alone anyway, so...  (But it startled the crap out of anybody else playing WITH me who picked her and didn't know about the mod.)

I'd say stuff about the other characters in this thread, but I'm feeling kinda sick right now so I dun wanna. Maybe later.

...Notorious

[LinknAllie]

1 hour ago, Baark0 said:

Next up is Wortox. I don't have any problems with him, he's very strong, and you need him around to get value out of his perks. Good stuff.

After Wortox

I agree with everything except for this portion.  Wortox is very overpowered compared to every other character in the game.  Since he gets 20 health per soul and he can carry 20.  He also gets souls from neutral mobs like butterflies which means he can get 400 health from a few butterflies (20 x 20 = 400) which is enough heal a fully upgraded WX-78.  Along with that his downsides don't really counteract this at all.  Only getting half hunger from food is counteracted by the fact he can eat souls.  The souls only give 18 hunger which is near to nothing,  but he still gets about 32 hunger from meatballs anyway which is completely fine to eat.  His monster downside doesn't even really affect the game much if you don't base super close to pig king.  

[Echsrick]

so you want to tell me remove character changin? ok just dont use it like me

[Gi-Go]

Winona is lame. She has her catapults and nothing more. Faster crafting speed is not a a "perk", it's a quality of life feature that everyone needs (crafting speed should increase the longer you hold *craft* like in minecraft or terraria). 

Her light has an awful range and cannot be shut down. It's intentional and is a bad game design. 

Her flex tape dosen't repair tools and armor. Why not? It repairs boats after all.

Some say that celestial portal made her a swap character, I say being able to swap characters is the only reason she is worth playing. 

 

I think Winona needs more gadgets so that people would want to play as her. Kinda like warly has a bunch of dishes that everyone can use, but some choose to not swap him out because he is fun enough on his own. And her light and tape need buffs. 

 

 

 

[Friendly Grass]

Almost everyone would agree that all the character reworks improved the characters.

Also JoeW in the discord said about Winona:

Spoiler

I agree. She came during a transition period and could have got more love. But she is cherished for sure.

With, you know. What's going on with her boss, I am sure she's get some attention

 

[Maxil20]

4 hours ago, Baark0 said:

Suddenly, Winona is now one of the worst characters, due to the fact all of her perks are craftable items that function without her in the world. You don't need a Winona to power her generators, or to operate her machines, so there's no reason to play her outside of the few days you spend building her structures.

Winona did not become one of the worst characters because all of her crafts function without her. Take Wigfrid, for instance. A lot of people value her for her battle helms, which after crafting them can by used by anyone, but yet she is still played frequently because of her other innate perks.

As for the perks she does have, they can still help a lot. 2X crafting speed is a lot endgame, and tape is a neat all around sewing kit/boat patch you can have far more of for later. Even if they are small upsides, they make a meaningful difference over hundreds of days.

My only gripe is that she was one of the first reworks, and it shows. She has two structures that provide function, and one of those has questionable use. She could really benefit from 3-4 additional machines, in addition to her 2 current + 2 generator ones. A few other perks (maybe gathering/refining based ones?) would help a lot too.
 

4 hours ago, Baark0 said:

Some people think his downside is terrible and hard to deal with, to those people, just eat 2 meaty stew when your hunger hits 0, it's not that hard.

The problem is any (and all) of these rely on crock pot foods. While crockpot foods are my go to for early to mid game, late game I usually stray away from this to find food sources that last longer (Kelp, honey, etc.). Warly, no matter what you do, is forced to eat crockpot foods.

Another main issue is you likely need to keep 3-4 general healing foods for a raid boss fight or go with an alternative. Most people usually like bulk making one type of food for stat restoration, but doing that is incredibly inefficient as Warly, especially once you get the 70% reduction into effect.

Otherwise though, I do agree with Warly actually being a good character. I can see why people would play him for a long time, even if it isn't my style.
 

4 hours ago, Baark0 said:

Unfortunately, Klei neglected to give him a downside, and instead gave him a sorry excuse of a downside, that being him having 0 hunger when transforming back into his human form.

He's got another, far major downside: he forcibly turns into a wereform every full moon. While this will usually occur every 3 or so hours at best and can be avoided with caves, there's an event that forces this to occur every single night, and throws off the moon cycle from the usual 1 new/11 full. He also still loses a pretty respectable amount of sanity from a wereform, and without proper care can put him in a really bad spot, especially if the wereform hits 0 as you are being attacked.

 

 

2 hours ago, LinknAllie said:

Wortox is very overpowered compared to every other character in the game.

He's very good for the first year, but I personally think his upsides start going downwards by the second and onwards. After that, most teams likely has access to a good supply of healing, and his is more of a supplement, and not a main method of healing (unless you are doing something ridiculous, like using 5 Wormwoods to farm living logs). His soul hop, while lasting much longer, still has an alternative in the form of the lazy explorer, a viable (but somewhat impractical) choice.

His downsides also start mattering a lot past the first year as well. Half hunger hurts lategame. You effectively have a permanent 2X hunger multiplier downside at all times unless you eat 2 souls a day (which drops your sanity by 10). It extending to HP and sanity hurts him a lot as well, as he's basically forced to use souls as a healing method or use honey poultice/healing salves.

Wortox is still really good, but I personally think his power curve starts getting matched by most characters with lategame gear after awhile.

[Grim the]

2 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

You effectively have a permanent 2X hunger multiplier downside at all times unless you eat 2 souls a day (which drops your sanity by 10).

I've never thought about it this way. How clever.

[Baark0]

I feel like I should mention that I said Wurt's vegan diet is a good thing, it makes her playstyle more unique. I had a thought when writing this that people would get confused, which they did. Just to clarify, I think Wurt's downside is a good thing, it doesn't give me any trouble at all either, since kelp exists.

To the person who said the game should have more crafting tabs, I agree, I just wish a characters rework wasn't just a crafting tab.

Yes, I meant to say Willow freezes when insane, not when cold, I'm dumb.

One of my problems with DST's swapping of characters is how easy it is to do. Sure it's kinda expensive to get the portal built, but after that you can effectively turn 1 moon rock and 1 purple gem into an infinite varg farm, tons of living logs, many of Warly's powerful crockpot dishes. I don't dislike it, I dislike how easy it is to do. Granted I'm not gonna stop using it, since it's really good, but I wouldn't mind a nerf to it.

And to Maxil20, Bee Queen solves a lot of problems for Warly. The crown is good for sanity, the jellybeans are good for healing, and bundling wraps means you can carry around a bundle full of whatever food you want. Warly's crockpot is also portable, meaning you can bundle up ingredients and cook on the fly, if for some reason you don't want to cook a bunch of crockpot meals beforehand.

[Masked Koopa]

You don't play Wurt for access to the structures themselves, you play her for the practicality of the merms as minions. Not only as they a very easy way to beat bee queen every 20 days (meaning you can just rely on jellybeans for healing), they're relatively cheap too. A few hired merms can easily take out tentacles, meaning amassing tentacle spots is easy. Grass and twigs can be farmed using the usual methods, and flint and wood can both be mined/chopped by those very same merms. Compared to the absolute pain that is farming bunny puffs and carrots, merm guards are a much more practical option, and I've found 30 merm guards to be a very fast and low-cost way to beat her without needing to spend anything other than 30 juicy berries. It can take a bit of prep work, sure, but it's very practical in the long term.

Merms in general are also just fantastic minions, and while you can wrap a clever disguise and hire regular merms, it means your head slot is taken for the entire duration of any chopping or mining you want to do, and they are a fair bit weaker vs treeguards, and respawn slower. Add onto that her downright broken fish perks, her immunity to wetness and great base stats while merm king is alive (including the best hunger stat in the game in terms of time taken to start starving), and you have a character that more than justifies her downsides.

That really only leaves pig king/gold which is whatever. If you play with friends it doesn't matter at all, and otherwise you can just swap to a different char, fill a chest up with gold, and swap back. It's not like gold runs out quickly if you're playing solo.

[Cheggf]

6 hours ago, Baark0 said:

Wormwood falls into a category of character's who's main perk is a crafting tab, and unfortunately for Wormwood, his crafting tab is crafted items that can be used by any character, namely, the living logs. Due to this, Wormwood is frequently used as a living log machine, before he is swapped out for someone with useful perks. He does have some other small upsides, such as blooming, that can make playing as him worth it.

Wormwood's main perks are a permanent 20% movement speed boost (movement speed is one of, if not the, most powerful things in the game) that can be started in the first autumn, infinite living logs, and being by far the best farmer. Sure, you can just do those last 2 and switch off, but there's a lot of merit to a character who moves 20% faster and can craft infinite dark swords for only 1 stack of NMF instead of NMF + logs. If you're using magi you'd already have NMF stack so it's basically infinite dark swords for no slots!

6 hours ago, Baark0 said:

I'm pretty sure Wendy is the next character to get a rework, and it's a pretty good one.

Ugh.

[Yuuko]

The portal didn't make Winona bad.  It made her good.  Winona's downside is that early game she is pretty garbage.  Fast crafting pings your hunger, combined with the sporadic crafting of early game this is a decent hunger tax.  Combined with her half speed crafting at low hunger she can be VERY annoying when you're trying to craft a weapon, armor, or light source in a pinch.  In order to set up any of her structures she needs a LOT of materials.  Winona isn't going to win any speed records rushing bosses with her catapults.

Without the portal people just didn't play Winona because it meant you were playing with a penalized character for a while before you could actually set things up.  With the portal people are actually using her because they can bypass her early game, bringing her in with stacks of stone, gems, and other resources for her to get to work with.

If they changed Winona's in game style to be less punishing people would play winona full time.

Ironically the portal isn't the problem, its the harsh downsides she faces that make the game overly tedious that makes her a switch character.  Ironic because you seem to think harsh downsides are a good thing lol  Characters with harsh downsides are always pushed aside because they tend to make the game less fun to play.  Just compare the number of people picking Wolfgang into boss rushes vs Wes, or how popular Wendy is (before, but especially after her rework.)

I think Klei is on to something by removing / lessening character downsides.  It lets you express yourself with your character choices, rather than restrict your choices by what is tolerable.  Besides, they can always make the world harder to make up for it...  Klei is a pretty good company.  This isn't their first go round with the reworks.  They did commit too going full circle through every character, and they're almoost done with that.  RoT just wrapped up...  I'm pretty sure they'll circle around to address any lingering pain points soon enugh.

[Masked Koopa]

47 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Ironically the portal isn't the problem, its the harsh downsides she faces that make the game overly tedious that makes her a switch character.  Ironic because you seem to think harsh downsides are a good thing lol  Characters with harsh downsides are always pushed aside because they tend to make the game less fun to play.  Just compare the number of people picking Wolfgang into boss rushes vs Wes, or how popular Wendy is (before, but especially after her rework.)

Downsides are important so long as they exist to balance out a strong upside in return. You point out wes and wolfgang, but wes is unique in that he's meant to be an awful character in general, while wolfgang does have a downside in the form of a higher hunger drain, and a requirement to eat more to maintain his high power.

Now whether or not a character's downsides actually justify their power level is another matter entirely, but to me there's something much more rewarding about a character that has to work around a downside to make use of their abilities than just having inherent upsides with no cost.

The issue with Winona isn't that she relies on structures, or that she has higher hunger drain while crafting, it's that she doesn't actually have any abilities beyond creating objects. In my opinion a good way to go about this might be to expand the repertoire of things she can do faster at the cost of hunger - make it so she can chop/dig/mine faster, collect faster, pick up items faster and move faster - all at the cost of hunger, like a worker version of wolfgang. This would make her better at actually accumulating the resources she needs to build her items, but require a player experience enough to have a consistent stream of food, OR give her synergy with characters that are good at supplying or not needing food, like wortox and wormwood.

 

[Well-met]

Making every character really good is what Klei is going for rather than focusing downsides.

Woodie's downside is the forced transformations which I'm pretty sure is completely unbearable in Eye of the Storm

The class change portal being available straight out of the first season was a mistake for certain.

Wendy already has her rework and I'm confused about your statement

[Friendly Grass]

It’s strange that people have so much trouble understanding woodie’s downsides. They’re just a little different from how it’s normally done.

Most characters downsides are generally designed to promote their upsides. Wendy’s base 0.75x damage downside motivates players to use Abigail to give her a massive damage boost. Wigfrid can only eat meat which motivates players to use her fighting upsides to kill more things. Willow being slightly more susceptible to cold and insanity motivates players to use Bernie and BERNIE! to counteract this. This helps make characters feel unique and rewarding.

Woodie does have one downside that’s like this where he transforms on a full moon. This can be a much bigger downside with the new update, too.

But the downside’s *of* his wereforms are still valid downsides. He loses the ability to pick things up. As well as to eat, use, or interact with things. He gets a sanity drain. The idols/monster food cost health and sanity. He gets dropped to 0 hunger when he reverts to normal form. Just because you can technically ignore all of his upsides and not have to deal with these downsides much does not invalidate them as downsides.

[Mysterious box]

17 hours ago, LinknAllie said:

I agree with everything except for this portion.  Wortox is very overpowered compared to every other character in the game.  Since he gets 20 health per soul and he can carry 20.  He also gets souls from neutral mobs like butterflies which means he can get 400 health from a few butterflies (20 x 20 = 400) which is enough heal a fully upgraded WX-78.  Along with that his downsides don't really counteract this at all.  Only getting half hunger from food is counteracted by the fact he can eat souls.  The souls only give 18 hunger which is near to nothing,  but he still gets about 32 hunger from meatballs anyway which is completely fine to eat.  His monster downside doesn't even really affect the game much if you don't base super close to pig king.  

Depends on how you look at it really yes he always has soul access but healing food stockpiles very quickly in the mid game I can imitate wortox by carrying around a stack of cooked potatoes that won't drain my sanity and bundle them if necessary yes he has a aoe heal but that's a teamwork ability and i doubt people would complain about team contributions.

[Baark0]

Harsh downsides are good when they balance out a character or incentivize a unique playstyle IMO. About the wendy thing, I just misspoke. I intended to say that I was pretty sure Wendy was the next character to get a rework, since I stopped following the game for ~4 months of 2020 and wasn't sure when she got reworked.

[Guille6785]

18 hours ago, LinknAllie said:

I agree with everything except for this portion.  Wortox is very overpowered compared to every other character in the game.  Since he gets 20 health per soul and he can carry 20.  He also gets souls from neutral mobs like butterflies which means he can get 400 health from a few butterflies (20 x 20 = 400) which is enough heal a fully upgraded WX-78.

his healing upside stops being an upside when you learn how to avoid damage