Maxwell Character Rework Concept

[MrZeroLeft]

I’m back with more rework concepts I do for fun this time wanting to explore what to do with Maxwell. Although I believe Max does well in his role, and I don’t pretend to change that, some quality of life improvements and refreshment would not be bad.

Maxwell from a simple magician to king of the Constant, with that background I believe we can emphasize more his connection with magic and domain of the shadows while keeping the personality he has grown to enbody of “I don’t like to have my hands dirty, but if you want something well done do it yourself”, at least that’s how I see him.

 

Stats:

Health: 75

 

Hunger: 150

 

(new)Sanity: 300 (Just think think makes sense his sanity be the highest or one of the highest)

 

Sanity Mod: +6.66 per minute

 

(new)Damage: 0.75

 

(new)Damage received: 1.25

 

Perks:

(new?) Is dapper but frail: Has high sanity and sanity regen but low health and damage, receives more damage and creatures recruited by Maxwell are loyal for more time.

 

(Max will keep mainly as a resource collect character but this changes are to incentivise players using the new part of his kit to play different to compensate for his weaknesses) 

 

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(new?) Can split his mind into pieces: Maxwell can use the Codex Umbra as a station to create puppets with a tool and nightmare fuel, the puppets will follow Maxwell performing their duties.

Maxwell can click with the codex in a puppet, making him stop working and just following doing it again will put the puppet back to work.

He can also give a puppet nightmare fuel so the puppet goes autonomous in a moderate radius from where he received the fuel, this will make the puppet stop following Maxwell and just work within this radius once there is nothing more that puppet can do he will disappear.

1 puppet will cost 3.33, 2 puppets 6.66, 3 puppets 12.1212 sanity per minute and so on.

there is no max limit to puppets but if Maxwell sanity reaches 0 all puppets will vanish.

When a puppet dies he drops everything that it was carrying.

Maxwell can hit his puppets to vanish then doing so will refund half of the fuel used to make the puppet.

 

Puppets:

(new?) Duelist Puppet: hp: 1, damage reduction: 95%, damage: 68, helps Maxwell into combat damage dealt to this puppet is discounted on Maxwell sanity, 2 fuel and 1 spear

 

Lumberjack Puppet: hp: 1, cuts trees, 2 fuel and 1 axe

 

Miner Puppet: hp: 1, mines rocks, 2 fuel and 1 pickaxe

 

Digger Puppet: hp: 1, digs, 2 fuel and 1 shovel

 

(new) Farmer Puppet: hp: 1, uses hoe on the soil and water the crops, 4 fuel and 1 hoe 1 watering can

 

(new) Scout Puppet: hp: 1, inventory slots: 4, picks gras, sticks and other resources on the ground gives then back to Maxwell when it’s inventory is full, 2 fuel

 

(the puppets AI is supposed to still the same with then beeing stupid but with some control do they don’t mess up your decoration and the duelist being viable, the changes to sanity is because the puppets are his main appeal so I wanted to make then more present and diverse also making the player planning ahead on his resources)

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(new?) Was once the king of the world: Maxwell is now able to hit shadows before they are hostile for him, loses 0.25 less sanity for the dark and fighting monsters, has more nightmare fuel and gears dropped by killing clockworks and shadow creatures.

 

(this is for the most part a roleplay perk, he created a lot of the stuff we see in Constant and was around the shadows for so long.., even so the perk complement really well the changes to his satiny and puppets, except the gear part that’s because he’s the one who build then)

 

(new) Was once a magician...: Maxwell now starts with tier 1 magic unlocked, has 50% more damage and durability and 50% less sanity loss with items from the magic tab and can create shadow versions of some items in the magic tab.

 

(new) Dark fire staff: Uses: 40, Damage: 10, Sanity -2, ignites the target with black flames that doesn't spread

 

(new) Dark ice Staff: Uses 40, Damage: 30, Sanity -2, slows the target but doesn't freezes then

 

(new) Dark belt of hunger: ads a +2 health regen 

 

(new) Dark one man band: instead of recruiting creatures makes then hostile to everything

 

(new) Dark bat bat: uses 75, damage 43, on hit +4 health, +1 sanity

 

(this is supposed to emphasize Max background and makes him really more on shadow tems to deal damage, compensating his new weaknesses, also creating some new fun stuff)

 

This rework would be better with some new shadow creatures being added to the game, since he will need a lot of fuel.

 

Notes:

English it’s not my native language

 

I don’t know how to make mods, none of this have been tested

 

here is my WX rework concept if you are interested: https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/121463-wx-78-character-rework-concept/

 

Tks for reading =^-^=

 

[Ketrai]

Keeping his health the same but increasing damage taken feels like doubling down on what is already the case. Maxwell is squishy. This can be especially problematic when dealing with common enemies. This change will literally get him two shot by pigs, and three-shot by spiders without armor. By the same logic, he goes from taking 16 hits from spiders when you do have armor to taking only 12. And that's not even considering bosses.

The puppet rework will make him better at quickly harvesting large amounts of resources. (Not to mention the insane amount of puppets you can support with enlightened crown or a dapper suit.) Including to obscene levels. Nothing will stop maxwell from going down into the caves, kill a few nightmare monkeys, and proceed to clean out the entire map worth of resources in a few days. Whilst messing up his early game a little.

Why am I saying this? Pigs, sisturn, dwarf staff, clothing. Just having a pig and a dwarf star will give you 50 sanity/minute. Letting you support over 10 puppets with ease. Or about 10 with the pig alone. Now, this just makes it extremely trivial to level entire forests, mine out entire rock biomes, and puts to shame every other resource-gathering character.

The shadow puppet changes seem fine. Farmer shouldn't hoe on their own though, as the player can organise a plot much nicer and more efficiently, so it might become an unwanted feature. Scout puppet probably should be pretty inefficient about their job. As it again, makes other resource-focused characters quite bad in comparison, and it makes all kinds of late-game stick and grass farms that don't rely on doing manual labor quite obsolete.

The magic items are mostly fine. Belt of hunger healing seems quite powerful. Whilst the normal belt is rubbish, this brings it up to par with jellybeans... which is probably too strong considering the ease of murdering slurpers. It also feels a bit like feature creep. Few characters have both resource-gathering capabilities, and an extended crafting tree. The only one that comes close is wurt, but that's just to support actual perks she has, not just "make better pigs" alone. And sadly character swapping is a thing that's easy to do with relatively low restrictions, so people might just swap onto maxwell, craft a bunch of better magic items, then swap back to another character. The less durability and sanity use isn't that restricting anyways, given the relative ease of obtaining red and blue gems. And high durability of these items.