The Webber rework is awesome!

[me real life]

Hi! As an avid enjoyer of Webber's personality and appearance but never previously his gameplay, I'd like to add some positivity to the sea of Webber complaints, as I feel that he's finally gotten the gameplay I always wanted for him.

Rather than go through common complaints and try to make rebuttals to them, I'm just going to describe what I like about Webber and why I've been having so much fun with him over the past couple of days. Idk exactly how to format this, but I'll try my best.

Spiders as followers:

So, in the past spiders were like any other follower. You give them some meat, they follow you for a bit, and then they get bored and go home. Now, though? Spiders will NEVER lose their loyalty to Webber unless he leaves the server or travels to/from caves. There was one particular spider in my most recent session, a Depths Dweller I brought up to see the sunlight, who lasted from day 3 all the way to winter. Through fights with other spiders, with hounds, with pigs, with goats, all sorts of things, she trucked on through all of it, only kicking the bucket when the entire Klei Official did, I assume cause of the recent hotfix.

So what this means is that from the moment you spawn in as Webber, you can plant your spider den and have 2-3 permanent followers trailing behind you at all times, which you can quickly grow into a larger army once you find a forest. And spiders are super useful for all the general combat you'll be doing early game, Speaking of...

Spiders as fighters:

Spiders are absolutely AWESOME fighters! I'd compare them to Pikmin in that they aren't supporting you in a fight, they're the ones doing the fight. With the 10-20 spiders I usually amass early on, I can just walk up to something, press F once, back away and wait for the spiders to get an attack in, and then stand directly beside them holding spacebar so I can grab the meat instantly. The only time I'll lose any meat in this situation is with stuff like koalefants and beefalo that explode into items on death, but I'm fine with a bit of spider tax in the case of me not having to do anything but press F a single time. I have to imagine that AoE might make short work of a spider horde, however I can't think of anything that really has aoe aside from rooks and bosses, the first of which isn't super common to fight and the latter usually having anti-cheese built in for anything except catapults anyway.

Nurse spiders:

Nurse spiders are everything I could have wanted! Getting one is a bit of an ordeal, but after you do even just one seems to be enough to keep your spiders constantly healthy. I had an experience where a frog rain started happening to me and a friend while I had my spider horde behind me, and we were sure it was going to be the end of things, but... with just the one nurse spider to heal, we got through two players' worth of frogs with barely any casualties! They're a fantastic addition and one I can't wait to play around more with them in future worlds.

The Webby Whistle:

The Webby Whistle is an amazing tool that I get a ton of usage out of. There's not much to say about it I suppose, but I've really taken to whistling outside of a tier 2/3 den in the middle of the day and befriending only the warrior(s) that come out. Being able to get them during the day and without attacking the den is really awesome!

Also, they're cute!

 

I don't know how to end this post really but I'm loving Webber, he's like a spidery little Captain Olimar and that's exactly what I wanted out of him!

[SinancoTheBest]

Have you tried using the whistle right after an enemy, especially a Koelephant or a beefalo is defeated? In my experience the "defensive stance" has been perfectly effective in getting back all the loot from such fights since it stops your followers from scrambling to eat the meats for a while. I haven't been losing any hunt spoils thanks to it. The only time where I feel the need of holding space bar to 'rescue' meat now is spider infightings where the whistle won't pacify most spiders as they haven't been befriended.

I agree that for the most part, this rework is phenomenal in making Webber interesting, fun, engaging and much more in control of spiders of the world. I think most of the criticisms are blown out of proportions and only constructive feedback I can solidly agree with at this point is the price of some switcherdoodles like the splitters, warriors and danglers being too high for crafting just one.