Warly Buff/Rework Suggestions

[Keller Max]

Just couple of random (and maybe even OP) suggestions to make Warly persona viable outside of his dishes. Right now, he doesn't have upsides, so most players will just swap out of him to as soon as they bundle his special spiced foods, without bothering with his downsides.

1) Turn his Chef pouch into a tackle box like container, but for edibles only with 2x perishing modifier (like an ice box). Make it so only Warly can hold it in inventory while its not empty and only 1 at a time. Maybe different types of pouches, like Regular, Ice, Salt?

2) Getting more benefits from his dishes and spices. Duration x2 and Strength x1.5?

3) Remove penalty on healing/sanity from repetitive food, but make that food give much less hunger value for each munch. Maybe like 100%,50%,20% (This will help you in some scenarios like ruins, bosses) We already can't eat good raw stuff like Blue mushrooms, Roasted potatoes, etc... Making different healing dishes that will take too many slots in our backpack is a huge downside for me.

4) A random chance to produce 2 or even 3 of the same dish in a single cooking

5) Encouragement for comboing dishes. Maybe the longer you live without same meal, the more chance of producing double or triple dishes when cooking on portable crock pot? Or simply better food stats for yourself with each non repetitive dish?

6) Give some kind of timers or indicators for his memory, because memorizing when you can eat the same dish again is tedious. (There is workshop mod for that, but still)

These are my suggestion to make this character good on his own.

[Guille6785]

I don't think any of these address pick and swap except #2 which he should get, #3 and onwards on the other hand just make him easier to play for no reason which is a slap in the face for everyone who enjoys playing warly for his downsides

(also adding that like I said in the other thread I don't find pick and swap to be a problem at all)

[Well-met]

I like @ShadowDuelist's warly ideas best

[ArubaroBeefalo]

warly is perfect. Who cares that people use him as a volt goat jelly machine? as much he could get more time for his own buffs but not really needed taking in count that he is one of the best and more versatile characters

[Pig Princess]

Warly is already very strong character: his strength is in versatility (not only mining/chopping/damage/damage reduction, but also equipment slots he can free while using glow berry mousse/weather protection dishes; portable crock pot (relevant in early and midgame)). He doesn't need further buffs such as 2x effect duration, dish stats, etc., because he has significant upsides (portable cooking station, high maximum hunger, spices and all those unique dishes, even chef pouch is useful for keeping garlic longer until converting it into seed). Your statement that he has no upsides is just not true, it's like saying: "Wolfgang has no upsides, he is only good to switch for boss fights". If character had no upsides, you wouldn't create this kind of topics because there wouldn't be a reason to switch to such characters.

If you don't like switching characters, just don't switch them. What's your problem? If you are looking for teammates with similar playstyle (who stick to characters), you can create your own server and state that rule in the describtion.

That being said, I enjoy playing Warly as he is without any switching, and can confirm that he is perfectly playable and fun, solo or public world. Maybe he is just not for you/your goals in the game.

[Ketrai]

The only thing I'd really want in a warly "touch up" (I don't feel a rework is warranted AT ALL). Is some kind of decent benefit that incentivizes playing him that isn't purely tied to crafting. This can be a variety of stuff really. I don't feel like giving his already powerful food any more strength, is a good idea. I'm just going to throw a variety of simple suggestions out there, he really only needs like one of these.

- passive chef pouch effect. The benefit of the thing is currently so small you might as well not use it. Garlic seeds still are about a decent 1/20 chance in the proper season, and it's pretty trivial to preserve them if you really want to anyways. Gears day 1? Easy and better. Cage day 1? A bit harder, but still pretty easy. The pouch can always be made a little stronger, but I wouldn't be saddened to see it go entirely.

- Tie spices to events you can find out in the world. Mostly inspired by wendy and how she has a custom ghost, except these events would only happen when warly is near. (The ghost is a bit weird for non-wendy players who wonder what the hell it is.) These can be quite challenging, encouraging warly to invest dishes to gain special spices, or to cooperate with others. Challenges can be a variety. Combat, crafting, barter, cooking, seasonal, fishing, mining, chopping, picking, caves etc. This is also an opportunity to add new spices. (This variety also makes it so you can't always leverage them or reliably farm them. Don't have your fishing rod on your when a fishing event spawns? Too bad. But if a friend happens to carry a rod when you prioritize a pickaxe? interaction!) Sufficient cooldowns between events can make spices feel more unique, and makes it a lot harder to leverage the benefits when switching. Since you'll stop receiving special spices without being him. Not impossible to save up, but you'll have to main the character. These events don't have to be complex either, just personalize existing mechanics a little for him. Hell, I'd even be willing to make this an actual mod if someone wants to take on the coding part, as I'm an artist.

- Faster gathering of food related items. This means picking carrots, harvesting hives, and plucking out farm crops. (Would also be a nice addition to wormwood! as they're both food-oriented characters.) Can even give his culinary lust an option to gain food where others can't. Like sticking their hand into a wild hive to get honey, costing health for easier access to a single piece. Or being able to harvest mushrooms no matter the state of day. Makes it a bit easier for newer players who might not want to tussle with a hive right away. It's a nice reason to stay as warly, but not strong enough you'd switch to him solely to tend to crops or gather food.

- Weaker buff effect for non-warly characters eating warly-related dishes. Let's be real, moqueca can do with giving 10% less health, sanity and hunger to other characters. And volt goat chaud-frois definitely won't get ruined by providing 20% less bonus damage to wolfgang, which would easily tone back the insanely overpowered combo a bit, whilst letting warly compete by eating his own food! This can even be a slight benefit for other players in the way of grim galette, if it swaps 80% of your hp/sanity rather than all of it. Making it easier to measure, but less busted for WX for example. I'd even go as far as to make spices only give 10-15% to other characters, but 25% to warly. Just to make that gap a bit more attractive not to just switch.

[Ketrai]

On a side note, I don't think character swapping just to craft stuff and bundle it is inherently that bad. The only people that really get to a point where they can do it are die-hard players, or streamers with megabases. I just want to see more people pick warly and have fun with him despite his downsides. For a new player the faster hunger drain is incredibly discouraging, and it's hard to see the complex dish system and see the inherent benefits. More likely players just go "Wait, this dish swaps my health and sanity? But then I'm either almost dead, or completely insane! That's horrible!" Same with winona. Some inherent perk to make them a better choice for new players ^^.

Otherwise it's your world to do whatever you want with it. If a character is used just for crafting? That's just a minor game design flaw. Players can be encouraged to play in a certain way, but shouldn't be chastised for it either. Swapping in an instant is a great way to explore other characters when you get bored, and making the florid postern all moony isn't an easy task for a newbie either. They'll most likely learn it by exploring the wiki, or from more experienced players. 

[JaxckLl]

Spiced dishes could have a tiny rot period, effectively meaning you need bundling wraps or a Warly on hand to spice things as you go. That would functionally punish pick & swap with Warly. However I don't find that strategy to be that exceptional, since the cost of swapping is so expensive (until you have a Moonrock Moonstone farm, but at that point in the game you've already "won" so allowing essentially infinite character swaps is totally fine). There's rarely a good reason to pick & swap for boss rushes since the cost of getting the Celestial Portal built and the random chance of getting the initial drop means you'd spend more time enabling the ability to swap than you'd gain by just doing the boss fights with Warly.

I do like the suggestion of increased spice bonuses for Warly himself. That could potentially make in comparable to Woodie as a mid to late game resource gatherer, while also offering some unique boss fighting benefits that Woodie lacks.

[Keller Max]

25 minutes ago, JaxckLl said:

Spiced dishes could have a tiny rot period, effectively meaning you need bundling wraps or a Warly on hand to spice things as you go. That would functionally punish pick & swap with Warly. However I don't find that strategy to be that exceptional, since the cost of swapping is so expensive (until you have a Moonrock Moonstone farm, but at that point in the game you've already "won" so allowing essentially infinite character swaps is totally fine). There's rarely a good reason to pick & swap for boss rushes since the cost of getting the Celestial Portal built and the random chance of getting the initial drop means you'd spend more time enabling the ability to swap than you'd gain by just doing the boss fights with Warly.

I do like the suggestion of increased spice bonuses for Warly himself. That could potentially make in comparable to Woodie as a mid to late game resource gatherer, while also offering some unique boss fighting benefits that Woodie lacks.

My final small buff ideas:

1) Spices and food buffs works better or longer on Warly.

2) Chef pouch is having 8 slots and no longer a backpack, but an additional inventory storage, like Tackle Box but he can only hold 1 at a time (same as beefalo bell) and same perishing multiplier as ice box. Only Warly can use it. Other characters can only open it while its on the ground and carry only when empty. Does not slow spoilage when on the ground, so pretty useless as an stationary Icebox alternative.

[JaxckLl]

That's a really good concept for the Chef Pouch.

[Ketrai]

On 6/23/2021 at 11:33 PM, JaxckLl said:

Spiced dishes could have a tiny rot period, effectively meaning you need bundling wraps or a Warly on hand to spice things as you go. That would functionally punish pick & swap with Warly. However I don't find that strategy to be that exceptional, since the cost of swapping is so expensive (until you have a Moonrock Moonstone farm, but at that point in the game you've already "won" so allowing essentially infinite character swaps is totally fine). There's rarely a good reason to pick & swap for boss rushes since the cost of getting the Celestial Portal built and the random chance of getting the initial drop means you'd spend more time enabling the ability to swap than you'd gain by just doing the boss fights with Warly.

I do like the suggestion of increased spice bonuses for Warly himself. That could potentially make in comparable to Woodie as a mid to late game resource gatherer, while also offering some unique boss fighting benefits that Woodie lacks.

bundling wrap is already being used to extensively cheese having to play as warly. Lowering food spoilage rate only hurts warly, it doesn't exactly help him. Either way I'm all for chef pouch buffs though. Albeit 8 permanent slots seems a bit much, even if you can only put foods in it. 4 slots would already make him very versatile, given you're forced to give up slots for variety and portable pots anyways.

[JaxckLl]

10 minutes ago, Ketrai said:

bundling wrap is already being used to extensively cheese having to play as warly. Lowering food spoilage rate only hurts warly, it doesn't exactly help him. Either way I'm all for chef pouch buffs though. Albeit 8 permanent slots seems a bit much, even if you can only put foods in it. 4 slots would already make him very versatile, given you're forced to give up slots for variety and portable pots anyways.

If slots are limited, they need to be higher than a backpack. Otherwise, why not just use the backpack?

[Ketrai]

1 minute ago, JaxckLl said:

If slots are limited, they need to be higher than a backpack. Otherwise, why not just use the backpack?

Well responding to you and keller's musings over the pouch. Where it's a seperate inventory rather than just functionally the same as a backpack. So you'd be able to have both a chef pouch and a backpack equipped at the same time.

[Keller Max]

Something like Tackle box, but without the need of dropping it on the ground.