Willow's lovable, huggable, and magic imbued bear.

[HumanBean150]

You all know the one! Bernie is easily the most unique part of Willow's kit, and probably also the one with the most potential. He's massive, terrifying, and has 2000 health! He deals 50 damage per hit, as much as a tentacle spike! Nearly as much dps as a tentacle spike! Except he hits 4× less often.. and you have to be insane, so he'll be fighting shadows as well.. and you can only have 1... and......

Let's talk about Bernie!

Despite my horribly gloomy intro, I quite like Bernie. He's interesting for sure, and he's a very powerful tool for fighting groups of mobs or a nice addition to a boss fight if you already have a group.

He's very easy to both craft and repair, and he can be great for farming nightmare fuel. Unfortunately, I feel like a number of silly things such as "game balance" and "skill based gameplay" and "no you shouldn't be able to have 40,000 damage and 500 dps on demand for a stack of beard hair" hold Bernie back.

He feels weak, to be quite honest. I know that he's already quite powerful in other ways, but like, he feels like he should just crush all those spiders, bees, and frogs in one hit. I mean, seriously. Make him attack twitch as slow but deal double the damage, and I'm pretty happy. He could also have a medium form that any secondary Bernies transform into, with small damage and normal health. 

Whatever it may be, I would love to see Bernie get some sort of buff. I just wanna beat up dragonfly with a group of 40 stuffed bears, you know?

[Captain_Rage]

I am also fond of Bernie but I don't think he needs any buff. Bernie plays on the concept that Willow rises to the occasion when cornered and in desperate situations. He is still very useful outside these situations. It wouldn't feel right to make him directly controllable or too destructive. In my opinion, a personal 2000 HP tank that you can basically deploy at a whim is already immensely powerful. He even does well against many bosses when playing alone if you manage your sanity properly or when things take a turn for the worse.

15 minutes ago, HumanBean150 said:

I just wanna beat up dragonfly with a group of 40 stuffed bears, you know?

Why would you want that when you can already use Bernie against the Dragonfly which offers a fun and intermediately challenging fight..?? You can craft 40 Bernies at a relative low cost and engage the Dragonfly at low sanity and watch them duke it out, albeit one at the time.

Willow's Lighter could use some love. I have done my best to like and incorporate it into my gameplay but each time it gets outshone by other items and mechanics. The only time besides the early stage in a new world it actually felt useful was when I was sailing with a stellar Warly player on a public server and he used it to extend the freshness of his cooking ingredients and made a stack of barnacles last over the whole course of winter before using them for cooking linguini and other dishes.

Personally I would have liked the lighter to be limited to one per Willow and have it slowly recharge itself when kept in her inventory. Then it would have both infinite and finite durability, so it would be worth keeping it around even in later stages of the game. Although that might be too good, because turning food edible and converting mushroom caps would come for free.

 

Bernie could use a few more skins, though. Just saying.

[VirgilEngineer]

5 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

Willow's Lighter could use some love.

Maybe making it refuelable by almost everything? 

[HumanBean150]

20 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

I am also fond of Bernie but I don't think he needs any buff. Bernie plays on the concept that Willow rises to the occasion when cornered and in desperate situations. He is still very useful outside these situations. It wouldn't feel right to make him directly controllable or too destructive. In my opinion, a personal 2000 HP tank that you can basically deploy at a whim is already immensely powerful. He even does well against many bosses when playing alone if you manage your sanity properly or when things take a turn for the worse.

Why would you want that when you can already use Bernie against the Dragonfly which offers a fun and intermediately challenging fight..?? You can craft 40 Bernies at a relative low cost and engage the Dragonfly at low sanity and watch them duke it out, albeit one at the time.

Yeah, I didn't touch on how tanky he is at all. Not to mention that he's able to be repaired super easily, or just outright replaced by a new one. In that aspect, as a distraction and a tank, he's wonderful. You can torch an entire bee field with practically no worry if you have a Bernie. 

For the dragonfly fight... 

I don't have any friends so I need a horse of virtual bears to take their place.

[Mike23Ua]

I just want Willows lighter to be refuelable with Nightmare Fuel the same stuff she excels at gathering.. and I also want to be able to light Bernie on fire with that Magic Lighter (at the cost of faster durability drain) to do Non-Spreading Fire DoT to whatever he attacks.

I mean: Just look at Bernie & Ashley they’re covered in Burn marks!!

[HumanBean150]

1 hour ago, Captain_Rage said:

Bernie could use a few more skins, though. Just saying. 

This is now a Bernie skin name brainstorming thread.

[Frosty_Mentos]

Willow's considerably a weak character compared to the rest of the crew. Say what you will but fire resistance is practically USELESS. Situationally only good but we tend to just hide in caves from hounds.

Bernie is pretty strong on his own but honestly I can't think of anything else to be needed for him to be buffed on.

If really - Willow got least content change to her, being rather a basic character with a bit tedious freezing mechanic while her telekinesis is only applied to Bernie. She's kinda like an Annie from LoL but only has bernie and fire is almost never used as a tool for fighting.

If it's true, and if the foretold rewamp on battle mechanics of the whole game would change next year - I hope most the Willow gets more interesting psychic abilities.

[Hornete]

There needs to be something done about bernie in lunacy areas.

Right now bernie can not be used in any areas with enlightenment. I found this bearable at first since it was only limited to the Lunar Islands. But now we have the grotto, and the moonstorm causing everywhere to be enlightened in nights, which makes it really stink a lot trying to use bernie. Willow essentially gets one of her main perks stripped away in enlightenment, without bernie all she really has is fire immunity, which is just okay.

[-Variant]

7 minutes ago, Hornete said:

There needs to be something done about bernie in lunacy areas.

Right now bernie can not be used in any areas with enlightenment. I found this bearable at first since it was only limited to the Lunar Islands. But now we have the grotto, and the moonstorm causing everywhere to be enlightened in nights, which makes it really stink a lot trying to use bernie. Willow essentially gets one of her main perks stripped away in enlightenment, without bernie all she really has is fire immunity, which is just okay.

Seriously, this!
Even if its intentional, it's not fun. 
You're stripping away an entire perk for just entering these areas and being unable to use him sucks. He's cool! 
 

[GenomeSquirrel]

6 minutes ago, Hornete said:

There needs to be something done about bernie in lunacy areas.

Right now bernie can not be used in any areas with enlightenment. I found this bearable at first since it was only limited to the Lunar Islands. But now we have the grotto, and the moonstorm causing everywhere to be enlightened in nights, which makes it really stink a lot trying to use bernie. Willow essentially gets one of her main perks stripped away in enlightenment, without bernie all she really has is fire immunity, which is just okay.

But why bother going there at all?

Bernie feeds nightmare weapons, armor, and maglums very well; and the nightmare weapons and armor keep Bernie large. Willow gets some of the strongest weapons and armor in the game from this, and the lunar areas don't offer anything better

And if you want full sanity, make a circle of fire pits and endo pits. There's enough foods to plummet your sanity if there's a hound attack or another emergency.

Lunacy seems like a self inflicted handicap to me.

[Hornete]

Just now, GenomeSquirrel said:

But why bother going there at all?

Bernie feeds nightmare weapons, armor, and maglums very well; and the nightmare weapons and armor keep Bernie large. Willow gets some of the strongest weapons and armor in the game from this, and the lunar areas don't offer anything better

And if you want full sanity, make a circle of fire pits and endo pits. There's enough foods to plummet your sanity if there's a hound attack or another emergency.

Lunacy seems like a self inflicted handicap to me.

 

24 minutes ago, Hornete said:

moonstorm causing everywhere to be enlightened in nights

please try reading next time.

[HumanBean150]

2 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

But why bother going there at all?

Bernie feeds nightmare weapons, armor, and maglums very well; and the nightmare weapons and armor keep Bernie large. Willow gets some of the strongest weapons and armor in the game from this, and the lunar areas don't offer anything better

And if you want full sanity, make a circle of fire pits and endo pits. There's enough foods to plummet your sanity if there's a hound attack or another emergency.

Lunacy seems like a self inflicted handicap to me.

"bro just don't go to the lunar island or the lunar grotto or the ancient archives or ever activate the moon storm whatsoever"

[-Variant]

5 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

But why bother going there at all?

Bernie feeds nightmare weapons, armor, and maglums very well; and the nightmare weapons and armor keep Bernie large. Willow gets some of the strongest weapons and armor in the game from this, and the lunar areas don't offer anything better

And if you want full sanity, make a circle of fire pits and endo pits. There's enough foods to plummet your sanity if there's a hound attack or another emergency.

Lunacy seems like a self inflicted handicap to me.

You're forced to experience it if you want to progress the "story".
Also they're just really cool places to be sometimes! 
It's an issue if my entire perk is cut off from me for wanting to progress the story or wanting to visit these cool biomes.

Abigail is NM fuel filled, Wendy's quote for the crown mentions she fades away when she wears it but despite that Abigail gets to stay and be used in Lunacy areas. Bernie should be too.

[HumanBean150]

30 minutes ago, Hornete said:

There needs to be something done about bernie in lunacy areas.

Right now bernie can not be used in any areas with enlightenment. I found this bearable at first since it was only limited to the Lunar Islands. But now we have the grotto, and the moonstorm causing everywhere to be enlightened in nights, which makes it really stink a lot trying to use bernie. Willow essentially gets one of her main perks stripped away in enlightenment, without bernie all she really has is fire immunity, which is just okay.

At the end of "chapter 2" in this post (so sorry for making you read that) it mentions Bernie activating at full enlightenment in the lunar areas. 

I stumbled across that a few minutes ago, and thought it was at least worth a mention.

I've also reported it as a bug just a day or 2 ago, although I doubt Klei doesn't know at this point.

Do tell though, would you prefer if Bernie activated at full enlightenment or at low enlightenment? Obviously it would make more sense at full, but at low would be a bit nicer for things like traversing the lunar grotto into the archives, or waiting through night in the moonstorm.

Also as I was browsing earlier threads on Bernie, I came across the idea of using the shadow thurible on him to make him always active, no matter the sanity.

An interesting concept, but one that shouldn't get anywhere near a Winona player.

[Pig Princess]

1 hour ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

Say what you will but fire resistance is practically USELESS

There are situations when I think "I wish I had fire immunity like Willow":

1. When I use rain hat as rain protection gear. That happens on public servers, when one can't count on spare eyebrella available, has no time to farm tentacle spots and/or is not willing to sacrifice backpack slots, server is low on pig skin and pig houses in general. Rain hat has 70% rain protection, tree has 30%, and to drop wetness in these circumstances I usually lit twig or rot on fire while standing under the tree. But that requires several burnables and is inconvenient, Willow, on the other hand, would need to just lit tree on fire 1 time and continue to stand in flames, recovering sanity as a bonus and raising body temperature to a higher values (relevant in early spring when freezing is still a danger even for dry characters).

2. When I burn tree to heat thermal stone. While on personal servers I prefer beefalo hat/puffy vest/hot dragon chili salad, on public server the most consistent strategy I found for myself is to use thermal stone due to availability of resources and versatility. It would be nice to just lit tree on fire and continue to stay in flames instead of dropping thermal stone each time (although I'm not sure if it's enough time for Willow to overheat).

3. When I use thermal stone + watering can to cool thermal stone in summer. Usually that happens far away from base so there is no farm soil, so to water thermal stone I lit some burnable next to thermal stone and extinguish it, but because of slow animation of watering I take fire damage from time to time which I wouldn't should I play Willow (+ bonus sanity). This applies to any situation in which player extinguishes something with watering can, especially in case multiple fires covering relatively big area.

4. Cooking on lava pools. It's very niche use, but I like to visit Dfly desert often and to base there; I know there is furnace, traditional fires and Willow's lighter, but before Dfly kill cooking for completely free is nice even though it's a rare situation.

5. Fighting mobs while they are burning (koalefant for it to drop cooked version of meats and additional dps) and the ones that take fire damage from nearby open flames. It's nice to not sacrifice health for these tactics.

6. Enraged dragonfly (for challenge, niche use). Potentially fire immunity could be used to speed up Klaus fight too at the cost of some damage taken due to overheating (I can't say how viable it is, it needs testing).

That being said, I would welcome changes that could help to expand usage of fire mechanic, especially in case of Willow, I feel like fire immunity and affinity should be at least as impactful and rewarding as Bernie. And Bernie should recieve QoL changes first, like being able to follow Willow to the caves and through wormholes, recieve some kind of visual indication of remained durability when big (like Abigail had before rework), ability to make him small at will while insane. Besides QoL there is an issue with enlighnement, and I personally would like small Bernies to stay at place while Willow is insane instead of slowly walking towards her (at least while there is big Bernie nearby).

[Frosty_Mentos]

56 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

---

I mean, I know those things and they're neat but it essentially is just a niche perk of hers. Nice that you like it and all but I don't feel the same when that's the only thing that makes the part of the her character abilities. 

Essentially, boring and useless. But that's my take on it as a Willow main. Fire never brought much good to me in my playtime. I already stated why.

Anyway - she needs more abilities, fire or telekinetic.

[Captain_Rage]

The fire immunity and heat resistance is far from useless, lol. It provides utility that many of the other characters simply don't have access to. This statement comes straight from experience. Of course, if you stay in the caves where fire is a minimal / non-existential threat you won't see the benefits.

Coming back to Willow's Lighter... perhaps having it refuel itself automatically is not the best idea, come to think of it. It is however the only thing about Willow that warrants an adjustment, imho.

Since Bernie is getting little praise it looks like somebody will have to find new use cases to show the crowd and convince them otherwise. xd

[HumanBean150]

6 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

The fire immunity and heat resistance is far from useless, lol. It provides utility that many of the other characters simply don't have access to. This statement comes straight from experience. Of course, if you stay in the caves where fire is a minimal / non-existential threat you won't see the benefits.

Coming back to Willow's Lighter... perhaps having it refuel itself automatically is not the best idea, come to think of it. It is however the only thing about Willow that warrants an adjustment, imho.

Since Bernie is getting little praise it looks like somebody will have to find new use cases to show the crowd and convince them otherwise. xd

If fire damage was less of a threat, I could see Willow's fire resistance being really, really useful.

As a tiny example, there was a video about a way to fight a Varg with very little preparation: lighting it on fire before it howls, and then attacking it a little bit afterwards.

Willow would be absolutely perfect for that! But because fire can be a danger a lot of the time, it really isn't viable to do that for a lot of mobs.

I have always kind of liked the idea of a shadow/nightmare fire, which doesn't spread, but still does equal damage to mobs and players, and that would make Willow really useful in a lot of unique ways.

[xhyom]

Just let her burn items in her inventory just like she can in DS Solo and give it a cute animation, it would be so unique. Right now she's just a bad Wendy, even at farming nightmare fuel she's powercreeped by Wanda (Not really but you know what i mean).

[HumanBean150]

2 minutes ago, xhyom said:

Just let her burn items in her inventory just like she can in DS Solo and give it a cute animation, it would be so unique. Right now she's just a bad Wendy, even at farming nightmare fuel she's powercreeped by Wanda (Not really but you know what i mean).

She's not even the best at farming nightmare fuel, which is what a lot of people seem to think of her for.

It's certainly easier for newer players to use, but once you get to even a moderate level of skill, nightmares are taken over by Wanda, Winona, a Wolfgang, a Maxwell, a Worox, a Walter even, or a Woodie with knowledge of where the ruins are and a death wish.

Which isn't to say she isn't still good, but people think she's good for the wrong reasons.

[Shosuko]

6 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I just want Willows lighter to be refuelable with Nightmare Fuel the same stuff she excels at gathering.. and I also want to be able to light Bernie on fire with that Magic Lighter (at the cost of faster durability drain) to do Non-Spreading Fire DoT to whatever he attacks.

I mean: Just look at Bernie & Ashley they’re covered in Burn marks!!

This would be really awesome.  Have Bernie lose health b/c its on fire, but give aoe fire damage to everyone around him.  It would really bring out the pyro that Willow wants to be as well.

This suggestion and a fix for enlightenment, maybe letting Bernie follow her through wormholes / shards / and teleport to her when she distances too far like chester, and Willow is great.

She's still my top favorite character even though I don't play her as often lately.

[HumanBean150]

31 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

This would be really awesome.  Have Bernie lose health b/c its on fire, but give aoe fire damage to everyone around him.  It would really bring out the pyro that Willow wants to be as well.

This suggestion and a fix for enlightenment, maybe letting Bernie follow her through wormholes / shards / and teleport to her when she distances too far like chester, and Willow is great.

She's still my top favorite character even though I don't play her as often lately.

I think that Willow would benefit hugely from a form of "shadow fire" - I would say that she has 3 main aspects to her kit at the moment, those being:

Herself, fireproof, gaining sanity from fire, and generally having quite flexible sanity,

Her lighter, although it is easily the weakest, it is still quite a helpful tool,

And her bear, the original topic of this thread, and the most powerful aspect of her kit.

"Shadow fire", (what I am assuming to be a type of fire that doesn't burn anything, including the drops of mobs, but does deal damage,) could play into her own traits by allowing her to use fire as a weapon, without causing harm to nearby structures or flammables.

It could help her lighter by letting it be refueled, and maybe giving it a bigger light radius. (pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease)

It could help Bernie by making him better at punching but worse at being a tank, which is literally exactly what I was suggesting in the first place I would be so happy if this got added

But then again, maybe that's a bit too much to ask for a character that has been reworked relatively recently, and is currently in quite a good spot anyways.

I would really like to see a large character refresh after all/most of them are done though, just to touch up on some of the smaller things that the characters could use and may be missing.

[SonicDen220]

I don't play Willow much, but the change I want the most is BERNIE! being tied to Willow so he can teleport to her if left off-screen, follow her through wormholes and between shards (or just being able to pick him up when he's huge, that works too)

I don't think she needs a complete overhaul, not every character needs to be complex. Maybe make fire more useful offensively and less detrimental, but that's it. The only things I recall killing while on fire are bishops and tallbirds, because they can't attack while panicking.

[W0l0l0]

I'd like to see her have that thing Dumbledore does with his lighter, being able to steal them at range and use them later, (making her somewhat an anti-griefer!) combined with fire being changed in general to be actually useful as a weapon. 

[HumanBean150]

On 10/26/2021 at 10:48 AM, Hornete said:

There needs to be something done about bernie in lunacy areas.

Right now bernie can not be used in any areas with enlightenment. I found this bearable at first since it was only limited to the Lunar Islands. But now we have the grotto, and the moonstorm causing everywhere to be enlightened in nights, which makes it really stink a lot trying to use bernie. Willow essentially gets one of her main perks stripped away in enlightenment, without bernie all she really has is fire immunity, which is just okay.

uh