Webber's ability to pick spiders improvement ideas

[Pig Princess]

Currently there are a few ways to pick spiders for Webber:

1. Use trap; spiders loose loyalty that way.

2. Make spiders to fall asleep via different means and pick them. Panflute and napsack work, but are too expensive fot the benefit they provide in this case, while dismissing spiders and waiting until day is clearly just workaround of the fact, that loyal spiders don't fall asleep during day, is unintuitive, and doesn't work if server has no day (and it seems to me that Webber's ability to take followers with him is one of his major unique upsides, therefore I'd like this tool to remain in hands of player even in lights out worlds and the like).

I suggest to make spiders fall asleep if they are in range of player who uses one-man band. Aside from being cute thing Webber can do to his followers, in terms of balance I think it's fair: it would require to use 1 more inventory slot for carrying one-man band,  item has it's cost, is locked behind tier 1 magic, and one-man band could use one more useful effect. I'm not sure whether this item in hands of other players should be allowed to induce such effect since it would make spiders easier to deal with, but I personally think that it would be fun strategy, I appreciate strategies variety, so it would be ok in my opinion.

Another thing I'd like to suggest is to make spiders stackable in the inventory, provided they are of one type and loyalty state (loyal or neutral). Spiders rely on numbers, so Webber needs quite a few spiders to do something useful and effective, often he needs to lock at least 1 inventory slot for whistle to manage that crowd, at least 1 for item allowing to carry spiders (panflute, napsack, shoo-box+meat (2 slots) or grass+twigs+meat (3 extra slots!) for trap strategy), and currently can bring all of his followers with him into another shard, it just would require several travels between shards (especially when Webber returns with loot to base with his followers and needs to switch shards, but doesn't have spare 10+ inventory slots). Webber would likely use more than 1 type of spiders anyway (and that is at least 4+ inventory slots he needs to lock for spider shenanigans), and right now he already can carry them one by one from forest to caves and vise versa, spiders are useful only outside of inventory, so it would just remove tedium of the process.

[Guille6785]

I wouldn't mind a portable spider sack like the spectackler box that webber can recall spiders into

[Hornete]

14 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

I wouldn't mind a portable spider sack like the spectackler box that webber can recall spiders into

Are you stalking me? I had this same exact idea yesterday .

[QuartzBeam]

Spiders stacking would be far more (forgive me for uttering the word) "OP" than being able to pick up loyal spiders. One stack for healers and one stack for some non-basic, non-cave spider type and you have yourself an undying, fully portable army that can melt any non-AoE enemy with ease and top up your own health for free at the same time.

On top of that, it wouldn't make sense for spiders to be stackable (they're bigger than a bunch of other mobs that also aren't stackable). And more importantly, it would be an absolute bench to implement. Spiders need to keep track of both loyalty and health, which can be a different value for different spiders of the same type. And then you have the headache of how that would work in practice. Does feeding 1 meat to a stack of spiders befriend them all or just one? How do you relay to your players, who cannot see spider stats, why some spiders of the same type stack and some don't?

Honestly, giving Webber some special action that lets him pick up spider followers when they are not engaged in combat is all I think he needs at this point. (A special action so they don't get accidentally picked up by the Lazy Forager.) No need for anything complex and the one-man band idea would come with its fair share of headache-inducing implementation questions. I'm personally (and to my own surprise) rather fine with only being able to carry a limited number of spiders between shards.

[Mysterious box]

I think the easiest solution would be make the shoo box put followers to sleep instead of breaking loyalty and then make the loyalty break when you pick them up.

 

I say this because as it stands the shoo box is kinda worthless

[Pig Princess]

5 hours ago, QuartzBeam said:

Spiders need to keep track of both loyalty and health

 

5 hours ago, QuartzBeam said:

Does feeding 1 meat to a stack of spiders befriend them all or just one

Loyalty for spiders has only 2 states: loyal or not. As for health, it could work the same way freshness works, e.i. average value is calculated and applied. That makes as much sense as averaging freshness of butterflies and bees does. I think for befriending in that case option to befriend in inventory should be removed, and I don't see how it would make life of Webbers more inconvenient.

5 hours ago, QuartzBeam said:

One stack for healers and one stack for some non-basic, non-cave spider type and you have yourself an undying, fully portable army that can melt any non-AoE enemy with ease and top up your own health for free at the same time.

While I agree with you on that, moving spiders between shards is tedious, and things like player connection and device you are playing on characteristics change level of tedium a lot, which isn't right thing, in my opinion. On the other hand, we have custom-sized stacks already (ammo), so I don't think it would be difficult to implement 5-item stack size. If you have better ideas how to solve this problem, I'd be only happy to read; if you think, that one of the Webber's downsides should be huge time cost to move between shards his army, then I have no choice but disagree.

 

5 hours ago, QuartzBeam said:

Honestly, giving Webber some special action that lets him pick up spider followers when they are not engaged in combat is all I think he needs at this point. (A special action so they don't get accidentally picked up by the Lazy Forager.)

Then one-man band for inducing sleep should work, and since Webber can't pick spiders as long as they are awake, lazy forager would work the same way it works now. Or alternative idea: add ability to pick spiders to lazy forager regardless of whether they are sleeping or not, so to pick all that logs with lazy forager just pick spiders first (they would keep loyalty since they are not despawning), put them into chest, pick stuff you need, release spiders.