Thoughts on Wurt

[Horsheen]

6 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Is funny how people understimate wurt but call wortox op

Did you know that you can repeat the fight with the same merm houses? If you are in a boss run or a world that will be deleted before reaching many days then, obv, dont use merms neither pigs, bunnymens and nothing that requires time.

But if you are playing a long term world that initial effort will pay off since the following fights will be cheap or for free, if you build enough houses to make a bq auto farm, instead of needing to farm the equipement each time you wanna fight.

So i honestly dont understand your comment

Also 10 days? Use merms to gather the resources...

 

Ok or just use on tentacles instead, which is much cheaper.

The merm king drop table is awful, and 14% chance for spots to make more houses is such an awful %. Unless you make a fish farm, which again is a heavy resource dump. 

Yes I understand that you can use merms to get the resources for you, but they die so easily to treeguards, so have fun waiting out that respawn timer. In the case of fighter merms this is less of an issue, but again, huge resource dump.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

9 minutes ago, Horsheen said:

She's great in solo play, but I'd rather have someone else in co-op

Wurt bring unique things for coop worlds like easy access to bones, fish, frog legs (good dishes and very good dishes for warly), resource gathering and body guards and safer autofarms than with bunnymems

[Horsheen]

Just now, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Wurt bring unique things for coop worlds like easy access to bones, fish, frog legs (good dishes and very good dishes for warly), resource gathering and body guards and safer autofarms than with bunnymems

You make a good point here, but there's absolutely no reason to play wurt for a long period of time in co-op

Swap to her, build some houses, swap to winaenae and catapult those merms

Wicker is better for autofarms

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 minute ago, Horsheen said:

Ok or just use on tentacles instead, which is much cheaper.

Wicker exists, so?

2 minutes ago, Horsheen said:

The merm king drop table is awful, and 14% chance for spots to make more houses is such an awful %. Unless you make a fish farm, which again is a heavy resource dump. 

Fishing in ponds doest take much time and hiring a bunch of merms from the swamp and kill them is easy. With that you can get a lot of merm warriors

 

3 minutes ago, Horsheen said:

Yes I understand that you can use merms to get the resources for you, but they die so easily to treeguards, so have fun waiting out that respawn timer. In the case of fighter merms this is less of an issue, but again, huge resource dump.

They respawn in just 1 day... and treeguards kill maxwell puppets so that can be used against him with the difference that max's loggers arent a +50 damage mob...

1 minute ago, Horsheen said:

You make a good point here, but there's absolutely no reason to play wurt for a long period of time in co-op

Swap to her, build some houses, swap to winaenae and catapult those merms

Wicker is better for autofarms

That there is better things doesnt mean something is useless

Also it depends of the play style. For example i hate autofarms or using the portal to make everything cheaper

By that logic klei shouldnt release any other character because winnona and wicker can cheese everything...

[Hyuyu]

6 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Wicker exists, so?

Fishing in ponds doest take much time and hiring a bunch of merms from the swamp and kill them is easy. With that you can get a lot of merm warriors

 

They respawn in just 1 day... and treeguards kill maxwell puppets so that can be used against him with the difference that max's loggers arent a +50 damage mob...

Maxwell shadows take 10 seconds to remake.

Merms are overshadowed by a lot of other methods of "farming" bosses, and it's not usable by anyone unless you bundle masks.

In the case of wicker, it's free for use by anyone, without needing an extra cost or reprepping. Nona just needs a random gem.

I also ain't wasting my time fishing in a pond, making a fish farm is much more effective overall since the spots rate is so low.

 

As a whole we can say that wurt fixes issues that don't exist cuz of swapping, the merms are a sidegrade for bosses, and same for gathering.

 

But I understand the playstyle, I just ain't going as her for that specifically.

[Horsheen]

1 minute ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Wicker exists, so?

Fishing in ponds doest take much time and hiring a bunch of merms from the swamp and kill them is easy. With that you can get a lot of merm warriors

 

They respawn in just 1 day... and treeguards kill maxwell puppets so that can be used against him with the difference that max's loggers arent a +50 damage mob...

Wicker exists, so use her for autofarms instead, that's what my point was.

Fishing in ponds for a meager 14% chance for a spot, good luck with that one bud

They only respawn in one day if you have the merm king alive, which is a pretty heavy resource dump early on, mostly because you have to go boating for the kelp.

Maxwell puppets will run away from treeguards, and Maxwell can dance to bring them over to him, so Maxwell can take the aggro of the treeguards. The merms just try to fight the treeguards and fail miserably.

I get your point, she's decent lategame but there's absolutely no situation where I've thought "damn I wish I was playing Wurt right now" or "A wurt would be so helpful to have right now"

She's a decent character, and I love her lots but in no way is she more useful than anyone else

[Cheggf]

6 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

The marsh is an entire biome of free cobblestone for Wurt. That is huge, comparable in my mind to Wolfgang and WX's speed boost perks.

A speed boost in a single small part of the map is comparable to global speed boosts?

[Milordo]

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

I generally agree with what @HowlVoid said, but I would like to add my own thoughts and experience with Wurt.

One thing Wurt has outside of her followers is temperature control via fish, and while that is nice to have a single bundle being enough for the whole winter, on default settings (settings of vast majority of public and personal servers) player won't have access to sunfish during the first winter, so Wurt essentially is left with what Wilson would, and the first winter is the most important and impactful one. Not to mention the fact that player needs bundles for that method to work, and while Bee Queen is very doable solo, fighting her requires either 3+ panflute spam with damage modifiers - latter Wurt lacks, and 3+ panflutes on pubs is also not an option, - or using speed-increasing items such as walking cane + magi + road, which means should average Wurt fight Bee Queen reasonably early in the game, it most likely will be late winter/spring (walking cane requirement, magi also takes time to get, marble to be discovered, and all of this player does while also solves other survivial issues not related to Bee Queen). On the other hand, star caller is available basically from the middle of autumn, thermal stone from the start of any season, and among winter closes beefalo hat doesn't have season requirements, is easy to get, and if killing beefalos isn't an option, puffy vest is a powerful and easy to get alternative (which allows to use head slot freely).

To sum up: player can imitate sunfish effect with items available much earlier and requiring much less time to get compared to sunfish. If one builds megabase, then I see how it can be useful, problem is in 99% cases it is forever alone worlds (pubs rarely survive past 2nd or 3rd year) and very, very high day count ones (same reasoning + from what I see mage basers are a minority, and it would be just more beneficial to developers to make DLC character more versatile to raise sales, also I as a non-megabaser would like to have extra option when in comes to character choice).

Ice bream, on the other hand, is slightly better in my opinion, just because it's possible to benefit from it during the first summer, but still both ice bream and sunfish shine the most in multiplayer invironment and/or non-default settings, where eyebrella/snow chester + thermal stone/luxury fan/star caller staff/moon caller staff/beefalo hat are unavailable. Which leads to the question about multiplayer invironment:

In what way can Wurt help team?

Merm king could be an option to acquire specific crop seeds earlier than planting 40+ random ones (just like Woodie can get 4+ dragonfruit seeds skipping RNG if he rushes lunar island; or any player can rush birdcage during halloweed nights for pumpkin seeds, for carrot seeds real life year round), but in practice it's much slower than traditional method, and on top of that Merm king is pig skin sink + Wurt needs go out of her way to collect kelp instead of exploring/building base/rushing ruins or bosses/rushing beefalo/etc., and that doesn't synergyse with her kit to the point that by far more time and resource-efficient option is asking local Woodie to bring her kelp, or even asking Wendy (since she is a good sailor) to pick extra kelp for her. What I mean is Wurt has considerably smaller amount and diversity of available food in the sea (just compare her options to what is availble to Wilson!), and she can't even take proper advantage of merm choppers to build boat in the first place just because swamp is very rarely generated close to thick forest, and Wurt wastes time to bring merms to said forest, whereas pig houses are generated inside thick forests and in case evergreen forest there is delivery of meat for recruitment (spider nests) right near said pig houses (and swamp doesn't even have mushrooms for convenient merm recruitment). Not to mention that Wurt needs to walk back merms all the way to the swamp, and merms suicide on tier 2+ spider nests just as consistently as pigs (what's the point in chopping in dusk when merms suicide on spiders in dusk very rapidly?). So it appeares that weaker pigs are stronger alternative bacause of map generation and resource distribution tendencies.

What else can Wurt give to the team?

She doesn't compete for eyebrella, but anyone except WX can use rain hat just as fine, and Warly (because of fish cordon bleu) or Wendy (because of how easy it is for her to farm tentacle spots for rain coat) do that job much better, + there is Wormwood with thermal stone who can contribute a lot more on top of not competing for clothes.

She can leave all the meat for the team, but thing is meaty stew is the most profitable hunger-wise dish in terms of flat gain (usually around 75 hunger, which is a whole day), and no vegan dish comes even close to that. Wurt doesn't benefit +33% hunger from honey or seeds, other options either force her to resupply more frequently (like bundling stone fruits of farm vegetables), or on top of resupplying more frequently camping near butterfly spawners/mini-glaciers and/or crock pots (for butter muffins and fist full of jams). So in the end Wurt just empties ice ice box/map from any vegetable food and consumes more food than saves.

And last I checked merms don't aggro on bats, so they don't suit for protecting cave entrances.

As for merms guards - they look good on paper and that's it. First of all, Wurt has trouble farming tentacle spots for merm guard houses; it seems like Merm king was supposed to help with that, but he doesn't, and at best only consumes more time. Merm king aside, even if Wurt dedicates her time leading Deerclops to every tentacle in the swamp and spends dozens of days killing big tentacles in the caves, she still lacks tentacle spots badly to the point that building bunnymen for Bee Queen/other boss or fighting said boss manually takes considerably less time. + just like with chopping wood, killing spiders/ruin clockworks/whatever with the help of merms consumes more time and resources than it saves if said mob is at least in 1/3-1/2 day of walk distance. Then there is arguement of being cheap. Yes, one can recruit merms with seeds and honey, problem is by the time Wurt - together with her gang - arrives to the place of battle/resource gathering, she would need to feed merms more in 99% of the cases, + in boss fights merms will calmly watch Wurt being murdered should their loyalty time end. They just suddenly stop to care and walk away, unlike bunnymen, and Wurt needs to feed every single one of them, unlike bunnymen who require only a few to be recruited in order to bring all crowd to the fight, + they automatically reaggro on most of the mobs. For hounds bunnymen also work much better since they don't need to be recruited in the first place.

She can't save resources (and acquire extra gold she lacks from earthquakes) by living in the caves year-round either, because there is no way to refresh seasonal fishes in the caves, and while star-sky is nice, there is only one star-sky on the map + somebody else could need extra storage/fugu version for counterattack more, just like one can't count on personal snow chester to negate summer on public server.

So in the end, while Wurt can offer some QoL things on very high day count worlds, unique challenge and do somewhat good on specific non-default settings (no giants and/or lights out, Adventure Mode-inspired worlds), she just can't offer reasonable pros-cons balance to vast majority of playerbase. With seasonal fish, some bug fixes and Waterlogged addition situation has improved, but she still requires a lot of refinement work.

I want to enjoy playing Wurt, I tried various goals, variety of settings and circumstances, spend many hours polishing strategies, but was disappointed every single time.

Edit: marsh turf I consider worse version of cobblestones (and even more expensive one unless one has reed trap) because it's not eyeplant proof; for Dfly kiting, Klaus, Bee Quuen, etc. there usually is enough cobblestones naturally generated in mosaic, which I'm scouting looking for loot stash anyway.

And this is the best explanation of why we're disappointed about the character and funny enough need a rework update (not a slightly buff Klei... a true rework). When will be the update where can we swim with Wurt? 

[ShadowDuelist]

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

Wurt has trouble farming tentacle spots for merm guard houses; it seems like Merm king was supposed to help with that, but he doesn't

I generally agree with your post except this part. When playing wurt I tend to have a quick excess of tentacle spots. The way I do it, and it consistently works is the following: 

Spoiler

 

After finding the swamp recruit a bunch of wild merms and use them to chop trees or mine rock or whatever is needed in the early game. They usually gather a lot of boards before they are killed by stuff. Once dead make sure to recover the fishes, and use them to create at least 3-4 merm houses where you will base. These 3-4 merms will do all the work for you from now on since you can place them anywhere, and try to rush merm king.

Once you have merm king, make your merms kill each other often. You can supplement this with swamp merms so you get more fish. As you give fish to the king he will eventually start dropping spots. When you get at least 3 merm guards your empire is unstoppable: merm guards re spawn every half a day so you can keep making them kill each other twice every day and giving the fish to the king who gives more spots which let you make more guards which further reinforces the cycle.
You don’t even need food anymore at that point since the king will flood you in seeds, and with enough merm warriors you can just eat seeds. And still have them back in the afternoon for fights or chopping. Of course if you plant those seeds you’ll do generally much better, but I have survived without planting, just making them kill each other once a day and it still works. 

 

Now, regarding what others have said:

I managed to make a merm warrior village in a public server in about 30 days, and then use them to consistently farm bee queen and dragonfly. Other players will always appreciate if you gift them jellybeans, crops, frog legs, seeds, and meat, since your merm army is an amazing hunting party, but you have no practical use for meat.

As wurt my main method of healing are jellybeans or cooked potatoes, sanity is a non issue since even before reaching moon island the king gives you enough kelp to dry and stay sane, plus spiraled potato tubers are an amazingly cheap sanity food. And like I said in the spoiler section if you are in a pinch you can just get a million seeds and survive eating that indefinitely.

Why do I mention all this? Because there is the misconception that Wurt is a bad team character or early game character, and although she’s definitely not great early game, she’s not bad if you know what to aim for quickly. Her king is very useful for survivability, not just for fights.
 

Wurt needs QOL improvements, as someone mentioned she’s the daughter that received the less love by Klei: better merm handling, merms no longer getting lost, a much more comprehensive trading system with the king, one king to rule both shards, a way to make merms permanent followers or dismiss them, a way to assign merms to do specific simple works (like fishing, or feeding the king) etc would be massive gamechangers for her. 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Just now, Milordo said:

And this is the best explanation of why we're disappointed about the character and funny enough need a rework update (not a slightly buff Klei... a true rework). When will be the update where can we swim with Wurt? 

"she needs a rework because we are disappointed for her perks"

"when will wurt swimg?"

oh the irony...

 

btw, why all the people always treats character balancing as "there is a better method for that"

do the character work? is it funny? then why do matters that there is op methods? klei should remove wanda, wigfrid and wendy because the best fighter is wolf and remove bunnymens, anyways there is merms, wicker and winona, also remove all non meat food sources, remove all low tier clothing, low tier armor... or remove wes because there is no point of doing things if they arent done with the most efficient, autmated and portal swapping method of all methods

choices guys, the game bring choices

this isnt a damn moba where you need to play the op character of the week to win elo against rat kits, is a sand box survival game so there is no room for "i never felt in the need of being X character" or " i never though damn, i wish i was playing X". There is only few questions and are "is it fun?" and "is it working?"

[Milordo]

32 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

A speed boost in a single small part of the map is comparable to global speed boosts?

Adding the fact that yes, she might have more ground for speed boost but she doesn't have other perks that stacks with the speed boosts making her more "speedy".

A living plant is faster than her.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

8 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I managed to make a merm warrior village in a public server in about 30 days, and then use them to consistently farm bee queen and dragonfly. Other players will always appreciate if you gift them jellybeans, crops, frog legs, seeds, and meat, since your merm army is an amazing hunting party, but you have no practical use for meat.

you know it because you played and enjoyed her

2 minutes ago, Milordo said:

Adding the fact that yes, she might have more ground for speed boost but she doesn't have other perks that stacks with the speed boosts making her more "speedy".

A living plant is faster than her.

the living plant cant heal with tomatoes...

[Milordo]

@ArubaroBeefalo You're kinda missing the point.

Wurt is... okay. However from seeing the number#2343 thread about her, the costant reports of bugs about her and the feelings of playing her in these 2 years ( i remember it has been two years when she was introduced? ) from a LARGE part of the community, it's clear the character it's not that fun and it's not working well or as intended. It's like you're avoiding all the valid posts in this thread, only to focus on the mentality "tier list, this is S tier, this is better than X" which don't get me wrong, i despise it too. But nobody is here is doing that!

There is one tiny tiny tiny point you forgot about Don't Starve specifically, it's a sandbox survival game. You know what that means? In a survival you'll always look for better, faster and efficient ways. You'll always look for the shortest and less time consuming way. Why? Because it's a survival, that's why. It's completely natural and normal that people want that. Why you'd think Bearger is so much loved? 

You said yourself "choices guys, the game bring choices ". Why you'd think people always do these comparison with characters, strategies, ecc...? How can i choose something if that something is not comparable in any near level to other strategies? You see people trying all the cookbook recipes from the game? You see someone use all the dresses in the game? You know the answer... 

That's why i advocate for balance since Don't Starve is heavily in needing of one, a big one and you know why. Apart from the always point "Fun is subjective" but you have fun with a leg broken? You have fun with Merms broken ai never return to thei home? You have fun discovering that an entire mechanic like the Merm king to be more functional being dead, so you literally don't play with that mechanic?You want me to deprive in the joy of swimming in the ocean with Wurt? Why? 

There is a reason, number or reasons of why these threads and posts are made. So let's just stick to the thread and not derailing it.

1 hour ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

you know it because you played and enjoyed her

the living plant cant heal with tomatoes...

What's the point in that? We were talking about speed boost.

[Pig Princess]

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Once dead make sure to recover the fishes, and use them to create at least 3-4 merm houses where you will base

Problem is spiders vacuum clean fish just as good as any meat, and I'm not waiting for 2-4 spider warriors + a few regular ones to kill me right after they killed merm. Also fish doesn't stack, so it's impractical to keep 4-5 fishes while trying to rush merm King, I tried, didn't work mainly because of kelp requirement and resource distribution (fish in the inventory dies before I have a chance to gather enough kelp, and beefalo wool, and pig skins; + all of that clutters inventory already even before fish; maybe on a beefalo with piggyback that could work, but then this whole thing will be delayed even more; my goal was to rush merm king and specific crops before winter). And on top of that one needs to visit swamp once more for reeds, refine and transfer boards, which isn't a problem for stack or two, but merm's advantage over pigs/puppets/etc. is descibed as ability to farm more wood for less resources and time, although refinement and transfer time is the same as of Wilson. At this point I can use pigs for chopping, then convert them to werepigs and go to rocky/muddy biome for rocks instead of reeds in the swamp, difference is that pig skin stacks unlike fish (+ each house requires 2 fishes, e.i. at least 2 more inventory slots), and rocks stack much better than reeds while also being faster to acquire in large quantities (depends on how much reeds are generated in the swamp, I guess).

And that's based on assumption I can afford hammer pig houses/pig heads to craft piggyback/merm king place/other general stuff, while in reality such destructive behaviour without building pig farm right after is really harmful to others, sometimes even impossible because pig houses were hammered already except like 0-3, so I have to go through long and tedious process of converting pigs to werepigs while dodging their attacks as Wurt.

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Once you have merm king, make your merms kill each other often

Except this likely will be already winter and I'll be forced to feed king vegan food without even 33% hunger bonus help (so merms could respawn in the first place), e.i. babysitting Merm king while gathering scarce vegetable food and watch merm wars that are longer than pig ones, and much longer than between bunnymen. Also at this point I will need insane amount of wood just because both merm guard house and regular house require boards, and I can't opt for merm guards to save resources, because should I start merm guard wars with king of the merm alive instead of regular merm wars, they will take even longer (+ either way board grind increases a lot, even with merm help one still needs time to run around, pick logs, refine to boards, transfer them to base, fight occasional treequards; that  takes days, and while it's nothing to 1000+ day world, it's huge time sink for <35 days world). Not to mention, that in order to get 14 on avarage tentacle spots, one needs to get around 100 fish first, all of that in late autumn/winter/spring, when there are muc tustks to kill, ice to mine, Klaus and Deerclops to fight, ice bream to catch and overall food to get and weather protection to craft in winter, moose/goose to hunt, volt goats to multiply and horns to farm in spring. Problem is not chopping/mining speed of merms, but rather necessity to walk in faraway places while simultaneously sitting at base farming merms.

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I managed to make a merm warrior village in a public server in about 30 days

I'm genually impressed and would like to see that in action, but also have a question: what else did you accomplish other that multiplying merms? That took almost half a year, e.i. 4 real life hours, so question #2: how much hours is your usual play session? Pubs reset frequently, if it's survival, you can expect new map every day, which doesn't work well if I need to sink 4 hours each day before I can get opportunity to have fun.

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

jellybeans, crops, frog legs, seeds, and meat

All of this one can farm without being Wurt, and neither of this is character-exclusive niche. Again, on default settings (and even then she'd better have Winona in the team), if non-default, then it should be very specific ones for Wurt to shine.

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

you can just get a million seeds and survive eating that indefinitely

Or I can just get extra hunger points via meat. Let's compare value without crock pot.

Wurt can eat 5 butterfly wings which give her 62.5 hunger points (+33% compared to newbie Wilson can get)

Advanced Wilson can eat 2 monster meat and 5 butterfly wings and get 84.5 hunger points (+80% compared to newbie Wilson).

I used butterfly wings because on pubs carrots and berries are usually harvested, and wings are more reliable source of food, also spawn rate of butterflies correlates with amount of players, while berries respawn time and amount of carrots don't. I used raw monster meat because that is the most common type of meat early and late game which is left on the ground to spoil, and competition for that resource among meats is the lowest.

Let's compare more.

Wilson can eat cooked monster meat for 18.75 hunger and 3 lightbulbs/ferns for net loss of health 0.

Wurt can't do that trick at all, she will continue to starve.

Edit: rocks stacking better than reeds is inaccurate statement, they stack the same; I meant to write that stack of rocks is generally gathered faster than reeds because of distance between resources.

[Dextops]

From a wurt mains perspective I will say she is a fun character but the fact a lot of her main bugs still haven’t been fixed really just sucks along with general lack of attention  

[ShadowDuelist]

40 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Problem is spiders vacuum clean fish just as good as any meat, and I'm not waiting for 2-4 spider warriors + a few regular ones to kill me right after they killed merm. Also fish doesn't stack, so it's impractical to keep 4-5 fishes while trying to rush merm King, I tried, didn't work mainly because of kelp requirement and resource distribution

Oh I wouldn't keep fish that long, I'll grab those first fishes from dead merms of the swamp early game, to make my own 3-4 merm houses (which you can place next to a forest if you want). I'd try to not get them killed against a flood of spiders mostly to get those fishes, but if they are lost I'll go pick more at the swamp, maybe get them killed against tentacles when I'm done with them, or in some way that I can get the fish and make them houses ASAP.
From that point on the merms that come out of the houses you made are disposable, if they die, they die.
I'll only start collecting fishes ONCE I have merm king, not before.

 

43 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Except this likely will be already winter and I'll be forced to feed king vegan food without even 33% hunger bonus help (so merms could respawn in the first place), e.i. babysitting Merm king while gathering scarce vegetable food and watch merm wars that are longer than pig ones, and much longer than between bunnymen.

True but for some reason when aggroed the ones of the swamp do come out. I don't feed the merm king during the first winter, when I'm still low on food. If it dies, I'll make a new one whenever I get the chance/food, my priority will be surviving. I'd visit the desert often for cactii mostly.

 

45 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

I'm genually impressed and would like to see that in action, but also have a question: what else did you accomplish other that multiplying merms? That took almost half a year, e.i. 4 real life hours, so question #2: how much hours is your usual play session? Pubs reset frequently, if it's survival, you can expect new map every day, which doesn't work well if I need to sink 4 hours each day before I can get opportunity to have fun.

I spent a whole afternoon doing that, at least 5 and half hours of my day, and keeping the server alive  My point was trying to prove it could be done to myself, more than demonstrating it's the best course of action. When a friend joined, she picked Wurt too and claimed my warrior merm village was more of a messy merm slum, or  in her words "huge horrible merm ghetto", because the houses were too many and placed too close to each other. So yeah it didn't look pretty either... but it worked!

You can't do anything else but your own personal goal. For me It was satisfactory in the process, trying to find the most efficient way to do things at each stage of the empire growth, and also I kept my 3-4 merms with me at all times which is something I always wanted to do as Maxwell but was never as satisfactory, since the duelists die way faster than they can do any good.
I guess I considered that the reward was greater than the effort put into it, since by then I had complete control over the overworld by spring and was most likely un-killable. Sadly I left after spring, and the server got reset. 

I have the theory that all of this can also be made while taming a beefalo, mostly to move faster across the surface world. I tried it in a personal world and it was working, it delayed the merm village a bit, but I could move a lot faster and took a lot less damage while doing things, but I stopped around spring and didn't return to it yet.

I mean in a brazilian public server I met a dedicated Winona killing bee queen alone with catapults before day 20 and when I joined in early winter, he or she was already making catapults around Toadstool. That's probably the same in terms of focusing your entire gameplay into something, except that those catapults are immobile and will only serve the purpose of repeating bee queen, whereas investing all that time in Merms is a lot more versatile since they can be used for multiple things, much more than bunnymen or Pigs would do.

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

Or I can just get extra hunger points via meat

Meat is way more efficient than vegetables, I guess that why its mostly a Con. I would never argue that you can get far more efficient feeding ways with any other character, I don't think that's the point of Wurt. Ever since RWYS Wurt has that con a bit easier, potatoes and tomatoes are more than enough for an entire playthrough, and having a farm of those is not so hard or time consuming to get (don't expect giant crops, just the crop and a seed for planting them together and letting them be until harvest time).
Compared to Webber who can literally just eat monster meat, food is certainly her weakest point.
 

1 hour ago, Dextops said:

I will say she is a fun character but the fact a lot of her main bugs still haven’t been fixed really just sucks along with general lack of attention

This, this sums Wurt entirely.

TL;DR: I understand why Wurt is probably the most un-popular character in public games, my point was that she still has interesting uses in the early game, and that her king is not really as useless as everyone claims it to be.
She does need QOL improvements for certain, but not really a "complete rework" IMO.

 

Spoiler

PS: I'm pretty sure Wilba would hate Wurt regardlesss of any QOL she gets 

 

[Masked Koopa]

If there's one thing I hope klei gathers from these sorts of posts, it's that Wurt needs some attention. At the bare minimum fix those damn bugs.

[QuQuasar]

9 hours ago, Cheggf said:

A speed boost in a single small part of the map is comparable to global speed boosts?

If that's where you base, yes.

Also, pitchforks.

I'm standing by my original point: Wurt is fun to play if you base in the swamp and are able to take advantage of her perks. If you play her like any other character and base elsewhere, she's not nearly as much fun.

[Pig Princess]

7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I'm pretty sure Wilba would hate Wurt regardlesss of any QOL she gets 

What does Wilba has to do with this topic? Also I'm not roleplaying even though I like Wilba, and I don't hate Wurt. I also don't get it when people suggest that Wilba should be added to DST for wars with Wurt and angry quotes from both towards each other, I would rather see cooperation.

7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I'll grab those first fishes from dead merms of the swamp early game, to make my own 3-4 merm houses

That's what I'm talking about: it's 6-8 extra inventory slots, and while on personal server one can drop most of the stuff at future base location to free inventory space, on pub it's not an option since everything will be stolen. Fun story (not really): I once was rushing ruins as Wigfrid on pub while also building magic and preparing for winter, and when I came to my cave minibase to take my thermal and give people on the surface star callers and gems, I discovered that even thermal stone and charcoal (!) were stolen.

7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I'd try to not get them killed against a flood of spiders mostly to get those fishes

Since one of the bugfixes merms work independently from player in large area (at least few screens), and while this seems to be good, one can't walk short distance and quickly gather all merms around Wurt; this leads to lack of control over merms, in particular, they continue to chop, step on the creep (or even come close to spider, I don't remember for sure if spiders aggro on merms, but it seems that way), fight begins, then other merms join and they all die. Also they die offscreen and in that case I'm usually too late to save them/pick their loot. So I would prefer smaller working radius, or rather changing radius based on food fed to merms, but it's not up to me to change.

7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I don't feed the merm king during the first winter, when I'm still low on food

So are you usually rushing merm village in the first year only to abandon it until the second in most cases? If that's the case then wouldn't it be more efficient to rush RWYS farms (pumpkin + potato + garlic), kill Bee Queen in spring manually, hammer crops, bundle pumpkins/potatoes/creamy potato puree/fancy spiralled tubers and only after that build merm infrastructure - in the second year? But that's too long for pubs. As for personal server, in vast majority of cases only the first boss kill makes a difference, later ones can be postponed indefinitely with negligible - if at all - decrease of quatily of life. Bee Queen is a good example: player needs only one copy of bundle wrap blueprint; crown is nice, but very rarely one needs 2 of them (only for fully tanking Fuelweaver solo with damage modifier 1.0, but this issue can be solved by switching to thulecite crown when receiving hits); jellybeans aren't really powerful since there are faster to receive effect and easier to produce healing options (Wurt will most likely have RWYS crops early in the game, so she won't need jellybeans at all). This results in Wurt army being basically irrelevant due to 2nd and further boss fights being that way (only shadow pieces, ancient guardian, Fuelweaver and Deerclops loot retain it's value after the first kill). Again, I'm not considering the case where there are 4+ players on the server or it's megabase world (and one desperately needs to farm Bee Queen on cooldown for honeycombs and the like), since in former case Wurt will be too slow compared to facetanking with 4+ players, and latter case is relatively rare.

7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I spent a whole afternoon doing that, at least 5 and half hours of my day, and keeping the server alive  My point was trying to prove it could be done to myself, more than demonstrating it's the best course of action

Wow. I play from time to time for 12 hours myself, but after that I don't play at all for a while (my sanity drops too low, I need sleep and ice cream  ), and most of the time can't dedicate even 5+ hours to a single play session. Also I'm sure I'm not alone in that, even if it's weekend.

Would you like to repeat experience of building merm village for 4+ hours straight though?

7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

You can't do anything else but your own personal goal

I prefer multitasking, usually I choose 2-3, that's why even 1-2 extra occupied slots is a big difference to me, let alone 6-8. On the one hand, I like to kill bosses/rush ruins, on the other - to incorporate unique character strength into playstyle, + to plan a few seasons ahead what to use to survive, so I have no choice, it seems.

7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I have the theory that all of this can also be made while taming a beefalo, mostly to move faster across the surface world

That may work, but beefalos have the same weakness on pubs as merm infrastructure: it takes too long (20+ days, since free tusks on pubs is something that exists only as a concept, unless endless modded server). It is very sad to join in spring and see someone's tamed beefalo slowly becoming feral and realize that owner won't come. Anyway, I wish you fun with beefalo strategy on personal server.

7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

I mean in a brazilian public server I met a dedicated Winona killing bee queen alone with catapults before day 20 and when I joined in early winter, he or she was already making catapults around Toadstool. That's probably the same in terms of focusing your entire gameplay into something, except that those catapults are immobile and will only serve the purpose of repeating bee queen, whereas investing all that time in Merms is a lot more versatile since they can be used for multiple things, much more than bunnymen or Pigs would do.

That looks similar, but Winona's catapults can be used by anyone, and Wurt's merms  - only by other Wurts/people with bundled disguise (which means they have to know bundling wrap recipe). I wish clever disguise was durability based instead of spoilage-based.

7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Meat is way more efficient than vegetables

And this could be improved by adding more vegetable/generic food sources to the ocean and/or making lazy forager refuelable to pick all those stone fruits/RWYS crops; it would also help if lazy forager did advanced actions like hammering giant vegetables or harvesting stone fruit/berry bushes.

On the topic of Wurt at sea: I once was desperate and tried to develop strategy around forest stalker on boat (for light and fruit filler), but turns out he ignores boat boundaries and walks on water, including walking into main boat and hammering all the stuff  .

[ShadowDuelist]

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

What does Wilba has to do with this topic? Also I'm not roleplaying even though I like Wilba

Oh I know you are not, I was kidding for the "pig princess". No offense intended  Don't take me too seriously

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

On pub it's not an option since everything will be stolen

Indeed, I usually try to make my own temporary safe spots for dropping stuff. Even though nothing is 100% thief proof of course, it buys me time. Also 3-4 merm houses means it's not like I'm carrying the living fish for many minutes, I try to time getting them killed when I already have all the other materials and I'm ready to place the houses.

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

So are you usually rushing merm village in the first year only to abandon it until the second in most cases? If that's the case then wouldn't it be more efficient to rush RWYS farms (pumpkin + potato + garlic), kill Bee Queen in spring manually, hammer crops, bundle pumpkins/potatoes/creamy potato puree/fancy spiralled tubers and only after that build merm infrastructure - in the second year?

That time I made the whole village I didn't abandon him, it depends on the availability or scarcity of food. That time I made sure to collect cactii often (I was literally next to the desert) plus I brought like 30 berry bushes in the very first days, and kept making fistfull of jam with 3 ice 1 berry, collecting only the 2-3 berries I'm about to use at night so gobblers are not a problem. So I was pretty well covered in food. But yeah, if things don't go as smoothly I may have to stop the merm village progress until spring and dedicate myself to just kill mactusks, find klaus, etc, stuff that any other character would do during the first winter. Although having 1-2 merms by your side work as a great distraction for Mactusks and the hounds.

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

Wow. I play from time to time for 12 hours myself, but after that I don't play at all for a while (my sanity drops too low, I need sleep and ice cream  ), and most of the time can't dedicate even 5+ hours to a single play session. Also I'm sure I'm not alone in that, even if it's weekend.

Would you like to repeat experience of building merm village for 4+ hours straight though?

Eh at the moment no, lol. But I have! although it was on a solo world, for practice, I did it a few more times. One of my solo worlds is currently called "WURT TOO" since its the second time I try to rush the merm village. (And it's how I think wurt would probably say "two". Yes I make stupid jokes to myself as well)

Right now I've been doing that kind of long gameplay stuff but with Wanda, mostly seeing whats the best way to get an unlimited supply of watches watches before spring without having to always go to the archives. I even tried rushing the celestial portal or other wacky stuff like that.
SPOILER: its not worth it...
After a long gameplay time I'll take the rest and ice cream. I'll accept the ice cream even without long gameplay time 
 

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

That may work, but beefalos have the same weakness on pubs as merm infrastructure: it takes too long (20+ days, since free tusks on pubs is something that exists only as a concept, unless endless modded server). It is very sad to join in spring and see someone's tamed beefalo slowly becoming feral and realize that owner won't come. Anyway, I wish you fun with beefalo strategy on personal server.

Thanks! I've rushed beefalo taming in many pubs, almost always getting an ornery before spring, so it's something I'm very familiar with. I'm trying to integrate that with doing other strategies with characters that are beefalo-friendly, Like maxwell (his workers can do everything while you mount) and I think Wurt can benefit from this as well since by just showing them what to do they keep working for ages, and you can just collect in your beef.

 

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

On the topic of Wurt at sea: I once was desperate and tried to develop strategy around forest stalker on boat (for light and fruit filler), but turns out he ignores boat boundaries and walks on water, including walking into main boat and hammering all the stuff  .

Lakhnish recently made a cool video on that! I saw him do this on streaming a few times but it's nice that he perfected the strategy. It's a late game thing, not really good for doing "at the sea" but still neat and Wurt can probably benefit form it. I mean having a bundle full of glowberries could always help.
 

Spoiler

 

Ironically for being a sea related character I tend to try to avoid the ocean as much as possible with Wurt: I just cross to the moon island once im sure where it is, given the pattern of the map, and then try to find the crabby hermit's island through the bottles. I never got myself into collecting the seasonal fishes yet.
If I'm going to travel for a while I take a good supply of stone fruits, or just bundled veggies/dried kelp.

[Parusoid]

Wurt and merm king is the only way to reliably mass produce frog legs, fish morsels and bones shards outside of winter

[ALCRD]

3 minutes ago, Parusoid said:

Wurt and merm king is the only way to reliably mass produce frog legs, fish morsels and bones shards outside of winter

What use Wurt has for frog legs tho? When playing solo i mean.

[Toros]

Anyone who tells you Wurt is mechanically weak is incorrect.

I just find her kit boring and maintaining the merm king a chore.

Wet immunity is useless if it causes you to freeze, Warly can do the same thing but better.

I stand by that Wurt should swim.

[Parusoid]

20 hours ago, Erineyes7 said:

It's also pretty up in the air if you should have to continually feed the Merm King,

I wouldnt say that 50 hunger worth of food per 3 days is that much

5 minutes ago, ALCRD said:

What use Wurt has for frog legs tho? When playing solo i mean.

you can turn it into eegs, let it rot, i dont consider solo benefits, its a DST not DSS

[ALCRD]

17 minutes ago, Parusoid said:

you can turn it into eegs

Right i keep forgetting i can convert eggs to jam.

17 minutes ago, Parusoid said:

i dont consider solo benefits, its a DST not DSS

You should cause more than often there are situations where people play alone. Aswell as situations where people use same characters when playing together.

Like 2 Wurts on a personal world for example. Cause both happen to like the character and want to stick close to each other / have one base for both.

So meat will be somewhat useless and very low priority on needing to "reliably mass produce" for them in multiplayer too.