Some idea's for Winona

[QuQuasar]

I know Winona has already had a rework, but I she remains an underwhelming character. Same stats as Wilson, with a limited set of perks that make very little if any change to the way you play. Frankly, cheaper boat patches and slightly increased crafting speed barely even register as perks. Catapults really are the only reason to play as her.

But since she still has a ton of untapped potential, and since it seems like "how to improve character X" threads are in vogue right now and I'm nothing if not a blind follower of arbitrary trends, I'd like to share some idea's of varying quality.

Perks:

More reasons to play as her, and not just switch to her for catapults and then switch back.

• Tune up. Give Winona the ability to do maintenance on various structures around base to improve their efficiency temporarily or even give them new functionality entirely. 
  •   Alchemy engine: improve crafting speed for everyone in it's radius. Lasts 1 day.
  •  Shadow manipulator: a chance to reduce crafting cost, refunding a random item from the recipe. Lasts 1 day.
  •  Crock pot: cook faster, for bulk food production. Lasts 1 day.
  •  Ice/salt box: increases the freshness of food inside the box. Cannot be tuned again for 3 days.
  •  Flingo: Enables the flingo to come out of emergency mode much faster. Lasts 10 days.
• Winona (and only Winona) can restore the durability of all items in the game, not just clothing, by applying Trusty Tape to them.
  •  However, after a certain number of repairs, the item would be flagged as "repaired" and tape can no longer be applied to it. 
  •  It would also be cool if the item's sprite changed to reflect that it's basically just held together with tape at this point.
•  Not scared of the dark. Why would she be? The only thing out there is her bratty little sister.
•  Teamwork makes the dream work. Winona gets, and provides, a slight speed/mining/crafting boost when accompanied by other players and allied mobs.

Gadgets: 

Gadgets are cool.

• Extension cables. 
  •  Attach one end to an electrical structure (lightning rod, generator, G.E.M.erator) and the other to a fuel-consuming structure (firepit, flingo, night light) to allow the former to provide fuel to the latter.
• Auto-tiller
  •  A device that can be activated to nice and evenly till garden plot without requiring the player to do it manually with a hoe.
• Ice cutter
  •  A structure that can be placed over a mini glacier to automatically cut ice from it and store up to a stack in it's inventory. If not retrieved, the harvested ice will melt when spring comes.
• Spotlight improvements.
  • Should target players without light and mobs hidden in the darkness. Should not target players wearing a light source.

Possible Downsides:

She doesn't have any significant ones at the moment, so some (relatively tentative) idea's for downsides...

• Pyrophobia. In place of darkness causing sanity loss, fires have a negative sanity aura for Winona. This would be *especially* true of uncontained fires.
• Dislikes being lazy. Going too long without crafting something or otherwise being productive causes a 'restless' debuff, costing both hunger and sanity.
• Dislikes high society. Top hats and dapper vests have no effect on her. Gets annoyed by the pig king and loses a bit of sanity with each trade. Suggested for flavor more than for it's effect on gameplay.

 

Anyone want to share their own thoughts for how Winona could be improved?

[Baark0]

Winona is a fine character imo. Her spotlights are underwhelming, but her catapults are incredible, and tape is a nice alternative to sewing kits. The faster crafting speed is also nice for late game megabase worlds. This doesn't mean I don't want Winona to get more things, her machines are basically the closest thing we have in the game to automating farms. One criticism I have of your post is the "dislikes being lazy" thing. Imo, that's just copying what Wanda's downside is and just seems like it'd make her more annoying to play as, which kinda goes against the point of this post (the point being you want people to stick as Winona and play as her, not just pick and swap). The pyrophobia should totally be a perk though.

[Mike23Ua]

Just allowing her structures to be disassembled and reassembled in a new location exclusively by a Winona would work wonders for her.. (like setting up and relocating Warlys cooking supplies)

Fixing the horrible A.I. On her Spotlight so it targets the characters most in need of having the Spotlight shine onto them would also be quite appreciated (instead of the one closest to the Spotlight holding a lantern or wearing a miners hat)

Adding a team based synergy with Wigfrid so Only when Winona is actively controlling the Spotlight and manually shining that Spotlight onto the Stage Performance Actress she performs at her peak Performance levels would also just make logical sense.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

Adding a team based synergy with Wigfrid so that when the Spotlight is shined onto the Stage Performance Actress she performs at her peak Performance levels also just makes logical sense.

wigfrid getting a sinergy with spotlights is actually a great idea

[VirgilEngineer]

Winona rework:

 

Remove Winona

 

 

Add Wagstaff

 

 

[Dextops]

8 hours ago, VirgilEngineer said:

Winona rework:

 

Remove Winona

 

 

Add Wagstaff

 

 

Replace one bad character with an equally bad one the law of equivalent exchange  

[ArubaroBeefalo]

13 minutes ago, Dextops said:

Replace one bad character with an equally bad one the law of equivalent exchange  

wagstaff bad character?

Spoiler

 

 

[zacqiang]

11 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

 

•  Shadow manipulator: a chance to reduce crafting cost, refunding a random item from the recipe. Lasts 1 day.

 

Imagine returning one mandarake repeatedly so you can make a stack of Mandarake Soup.

MMM TASTY

[Brubs]

On 10/27/2021 at 10:45 PM, QuQuasar said:

 Teamwork makes the dream work. Winona gets, and provides, a slight speed/mining/crafting boost when accompanied by other players and allied mobs.

I actually love this concept I picture her working while whistling a tune/song which boosts allies morale. Could either help doing things faster or decrease durabilityloss rate  while cutting/digging/picking.

[HumanBean150]

I think a focus on her "do things faster when full" trait could be good to make her less of a "pick and switch" character. 

Simply allowing her to mine, chop, and hammer slightly faster would make her more interesting, and as long as there was a pretty severe penalty for mining and chopping when hungry, it would be pretty balanced.

[goblinball]

I think winona just needs more gadgets. I like the idea of expanding on her structures automating processes, like how her catapults automate certain combat scenarios. Stuff like fishing or mining machines, automatic grass/twig collectors, etc. the obvious downside here would be making winona lose hunger whenever performing actions such as chopping trees, as this encourages players to take advantage of winona’s new upsides, which will perform these hunger-draining tasks for her.

[Yuuko]

imo the problem with Winona is that her best perk is late game catapults.  Those are awesome.  The increased crafting speed is also late game when you're spam crafting things, but early game it doesn't matter as much - especially because through the first season or so you're going to be sporadically crafting things as they become available to you, giving her an extra hunger tax, and the slow crafting just feels awful.  The tape is nice, especially if you're boating, but its not hard to craft sewing kits or boat patches...  so while it is a great craft, its also doesn't feel as great at the same time...

I think she needs to have her penalty crafting speed turned down.  idk what a good downside or challenge would be to her though...

Improved priorities for spotlights would be awesome.  Having her lose zero sanity from darkness until after the first Charlie wiff would be thematic.

Repairing tools has been suggested but I'm not sure that's the way I would want to go though...  I would prefer she develop more automation features, like what you suggest with attaching an ice machine to a glacier to gather stacks of ice automatically throughout winter rather than wasting time manually mining them.  I always envisioned she'd have a thumber tool that she would set up on rocky turf that would generate rocks in a similar fashion, and while its working you would get a mini game of defending it against depths worms and tentacles that would spawn and attack it.  Maybe a chainsaw type craft that can cut trees significantly faster but has a higher chance of spawning evil trees due to its destructive nature.

[W0l0l0]

I personally think the fundamental problem is that structures don't move, meaning you always have to commit or pour lots of resources (and setting up time) whenever trying to use her advantages, you can't evacuate them when things go wrong, and they won't follow you when you need them, making her clunky. 

If I were to fix her I'd add some sort of moving structure, like a steam cart, with varying levels of control via specialised structures (from following the player, to simple back and forth commands or orbital motion). Then add onto it with modules such as a ramming bucket, a add-on for spotlights and catapults, and maybe chest and aquatic variants. I'd like to give Winona more options to tackle problems, ways to mix and match her solutions. 

[HumanBean150]

2 hours ago, W0l0l0 said:

I personally think the fundamental problem is that structures don't move, meaning you always have to commit or pour lots of resources (and setting up time) whenever trying to use her advantages, you can't evacuate them when things go wrong, and they won't follow you when you need them, making her clunky. 

If I were to fix her I'd add some sort of moving structure, like a steam cart, with varying levels of control via specialised structures (from following the player, to simple back and forth commands or orbital motion). Then add onto it with modules such as a ramming bucket, a add-on for spotlights and catapults, and maybe chest and aquatic variants. I'd like to give Winona more options to tackle problems, ways to mix and match her solutions. 

I'm kind of imagining a railroad of sorts from this.

Could you imagine if Winona was able to set up fast travel systems for entire teams? That would make her both incredibly useful, and also much more appealing as a character. 

[LowlySkeleton]

20 hours ago, HumanBean150 said:

I think a focus on her "do things faster when full" trait could be good to make her less of a "pick and switch" character. 

Simply allowing her to mine, chop, and hammer slightly faster would make her more interesting, and as long as there was a pretty severe penalty for mining and chopping when hungry, it would be pretty balanced.

Sounds like Wolfgang rework

[LinknAllie]

On 10/27/2021 at 11:38 PM, VirgilEngineer said:

Winona rework:

 

Remove Winona

 

 

Add Wagstaff

 

 

Yes