Can I get some tips for Wormwood's early game?

[QuQuasar]

I tend to have a harder time with Wormwood in the first autumn than most other characters.

My usual early game strategy is to uncovering as much of the shoreline as possible and collecting full stacks of important resources before day 11. This works well when I can stumble from mishap to mishap and recover health by collecting healing foods, but it's not nearly so effective for Wormwood.

So, what's the approach the Wormwood mains here take? Settle early and relocate my base if I have to? Try to rush compost wraps and healing salves? Or something I'm not thinking of?

[Random Guy000]

Im not a Wormwood main exactly, but i tend to just collect poop for wraps if i can, not much more to it, so i guess you could say that you would want to rush them

[ArubaroBeefalo]

i like to rush blooming via compost wrap (which now is a good early healing option) or via fishing and wait the fish to rot (or use toadstool if i find it for some reason)

after i set up base i rush a batbat for principal source of healing until i get jelly beans

if you arent on the ruin rush mood you can try to sail so you can find a bottle for having the best blooming source early on

take into consideration using dark armors since you can raise your sanity with easy things like pinecones

[Dextops]

don't die

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Just now, Dextops said:

don't die

don't starve

[Guille6785]

craft saddle, put it on a beefalo, profit

[GetNerfedOn]

while i suppose you already know the value of when to pick fights with any other character, its even more crucial as Wormwood given his health mechanics. Before any engagement, do your best to think if the fight is worth it, if you're prepared enough to tackle the fight, and if you have enough resources to recover from it.

try to ensure as well that you have sources of healing covered. glands, mosquito sacs, manure and rot all work. If you already have productive farm plots set up and going, convert all that hunger gain into hp with a tent.

[Copyafriend]

Early? The best answer is stacks of lightbulbs-> rot. Obviously glands salves poultice all work, and i HAVE to say to turn the glands into salves asap, but emergencies happen. But a stack of rot is a full health bar and takes only an inventory slot and some time. Armor is more important in minor fights for wormwood, a spider bite with no armor is a major setback until you get your stack of rot or relible better healing. Sleeping is very good for mass producing living logs despite the hate for it, honestly it heals just as fast as the compost wrap, and will heal you to full from 10 health using nothing but time and half a hunger bar. People hate on sleeping because its “InEFIciEnT” but its an extremely cheap full heal for a character who has to spend more time than anyone else to gather heals. My first move as wormwood is normally to gather six silk for a tent so i can heal anytime im at base without using my traveling heals. And if anyone wants to scream “efficiency” at me, let me know the last time you were able to gather 7 glands, 7 rocks and 14 ash in under a minute, twice in one night before day 20. Or 15 reeds if youd prefer. Once again twice in one night because i can easily full heal twice for living logs if i want to, just nom a couple berries so i know i wont be starving when i get out. When possible i use a batbat for combat and set up a bunnyman spider farm for regular glands so i dont have to keep sleeping for healing (but sometimes i still do because its so dang convenient and easy)

[HowlVoid]

Wormwood is a little hard early game so I'll give you some general tips:

1. Dig up graves for blue and red gems, you'll need 2 for bat bat + shadow manipulator. The best early game healing for Wormwood is via bat bat as he can generate the living logs himself; always at a net gain of hp.

2. Early game exploration is facilitated via blooming. The easiest way to obtain blooming in the early game is with rotten fish. You can come across a lot of it in the swamp or with fishing. 4 rotten fish will get you through autumn if you can get them by day 2; they'll be rotten just a little past day 5. 

3. Apply a rotten fish and wait untill you bloom, once you revert from phase 3 (full bloom) to phase 2, apply another. This will give you the 3 full days of blooming per fish. Otherwise if you apply one while at phase 3, you will only add a few seconds rather than 3 days per fish.

4. Farming Carrots early game is the earliest sanity farm Wormwood will have. All the carrots gathered from traveling should be turned to seeds for easy access to sanity. Wormwood burns through a lot of sanity when eating Monster meat (fast and safe), using the bat bat, using night armor, etc, so having some seeds nearby is always nice.

5. Using a tent to generate your first living logs is ok but don't rely on tents too much. All of time Wormwood has saved by not cooking meat or blooming will be wasted by the tent.

6. I don't recommend building a bramble husk or traps early as they are a waste of hp early game. Make bat bats/ a shadow manipulator instead. 

7. Going to the ruins as Wormood is not hard but having at least one marble suit handy is recommended. Having a guaranteed sun caller and deconstruction staff (for more furnaces, like at mctusk camp) is one of his advantages.

8. I will rate Wormwoods healing items from best to meh:

Jelly beans (S+): Killing Bee queen can be done with 1 bat bat, 5~ marble suits (plant them early spring; the earlier the better), 5~ Bee keeper hats, 1 magi, and 4 dark swords. Plan accordingly.

Bat bat (S): Farmable and self sustaining. Killing bosses like Dragonfly and Klaus take about half a bat bat to kill and supply the necessary ingredients for another. Placing bunny men at a sinkhole will auto farm basilisk wings for the bat bat. You provide the 2 living logs.

Healing Salve (A): Very easy to farm right from base once you have some stone bushes and a spider farm set up. They can be amassed very easily late game and are great for general use.

Honey poultice (B): They compete with night armor and amassing them can mean going out of your way. Basing near a swap should be a no brainer for Wormwood though so they shouldn't be too far away.

Compost (C): Good healing at base for when you want to top off your hp. Wormwood can generate a lot of rot from as he tends to come across a lot of food so through it in a compost. 8 hp each so don't expect too much or use them in battle. When on a beefalo you may get hit once for some reason so use it then.

Compost wrap (C-): A Better compost that also provides blooming and 30 hp intead of 8. Biggest problem is that for battle Jelly beans and the bat bat are far better (when it would shine the most). For blooming I suggest relying on rotten fish early game and growth formula late game. The need for nitre hold this item back greatly.

Tent (D): Good early game but don't rely on it, big waste of time. Good for healing in the ruins in an emergency as it does not take any space when stored in the construction tab.

Mushroom Planter (D-): Can be used to heal a beefalo with blue mushrooms. Not being allowed to grow in Winter holds them back a bit, but given you'll be near a sinkhole anyways, you can grow them underground even in winter. Having to go through a loading screen every time can get annoying. 

Things like spiders glands/mosquito sacs should be used when come across but I wouldn't go out of my way looking for them. They are not rated.

Let me know if you have any questions :).

Almost forgot! Bunnymen Synergize with Wormwood the best out of any survivor. Wormwood is mostly unaffected by the carrot nerf as he can multiply carrots without needing any prep at all and food was never really a necessity from them.

I do recommend getting beefalo early game and If you're good at rushing an ornery beefalo you can kill bee queen before spring even arrives for a good challenge. (You can do this without a beef but its less fun.)

The process is:

1. Get a beef by day 2

2. Kill spiders for silk and glands. You'll need enough for 20 salves.

3. Clear bees near bee queen for food and stingers. Burn stingers for the salves and keep the honey for rations. Should be easy by days 5-6.

4. Use a beef to enter the ruins and focus on a star caller and 2-3 fire staffs only. 

5. From here on you have some free time depending on rng. I usually use it to build my base or explore more of my world. Make sure you build your 20 planters underground and have 2 panflutes at the ready.

6. When winter arrives get spores and plant them in your mushroom planters. You can get some mushrooms and kill Klaus if you want you should have an ornery beef by day 23~24. 

7. When deerclops arrives on day 30 have him destroy some trees and get a stack of acorns.

8. Have deerclops aggro on bee queen and hit bee queen 1~2 times while frozen. Takes some practice but you should be able to get some hits in while deerclops attacks her and keeps the grumbles frozen. When deerclops is dead, use the hit and run method while doing chip damage with the fire staff (sun caller is to keep you warmed in the fight so summon a few across the general kiting path).

9. Use Mushrooms to heal beef and panflute Bee queen to do so.

10. ???

11. Profit.

 

[Mike23Ua]

Eat loose rot off the ground. Eat red caps (no seriously eat red caps.. wormwood can’t lose health from eating foods that normally drop health.) Wormwood went from being really difficult- to being really easy to heal with when he was given other methods to heal beyond his own green thumb tab.

If you just really really suck and lose hp often- you can alternatively just build a tent which restores HP and Sanity at the cost of Hunger.

Do not overlook the power of loose rot left laying around.. rot is great early game healing.

[HowlVoid]

9 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Eat loose rot off the ground. Eat red caps (no seriously eat red caps.. wormwood can’t lose health from eating foods that normally drop health.) Wormwood went from being really difficult- to being really easy to heal with when he was given other methods to heal beyond his own green thumb tab.

If you just really really suck and lose hp often- you can alternatively just build a tent which restores HP and Sanity at the cost of Hunger.

Do not overlook the power of loose rot left laying around.. rot is great early game healing.

Turn rot into compost as it basically combines 2 rot. 

Rot heal= 4hp

Compost (2 rot at a compost bin)=8hp

You'll abuse your fingers less and possibly avoid carpal tunnel. 

[Riddla]

Should you obtain a Bat Bat, it's also nice to bring Chester/Hutch with yourself, so you can smack him for health in emergency situations. Do not worry, he regenerates, just don't overdo it.

[ALCRD]

11 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

craft saddle, put it on a beefalo, profit

Lose a lot of sanity in the process (Real life sanity. Beefalos are the worst - useful - but the worst they are more evil than Moleworms i hate them and i can barely control the urge to exterminate them all.)

[Copyafriend]

1 hour ago, ALCRD said:

i can barely control the urge to exterminate them all.

Name checks out. 

 

11 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

 

I do recommend getting beefalo early game and If you're good at rushing an ornery beefalo you can kill bee queen before spring even arrives for a good challenge. (You can do this without a beef but its less fun.)

 

(Just left this quote for an example)

your tips are very good, but let them walk before advising them to jump off a cliff and fly. Everything you’ve said is 100% true, but if they’re struggling with wormwood they’re probably not regularly smacking dragonfly around and soloing bee queen. 

Honestly I wouldn’t recommend fighting bee queen with a beefalo until you’re extremely experienced, as 1000 health isnt really all that much, and the beefalo dying would be a lot of wasted time. You can tell when he’s low on health, i can too, but this guy is probably fairly new, and your advice should be skewed in that direction. A lot of people on this forum have that problem where they advise people who are probably new to just go kill a raid boss solo. 
 

To the OP, hoard healing resources to prep for deerclops and make sure you get some distance before you try to heal mid fight.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

10 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

Name checks out. 

 

(Just left this quote for an example)

your tips are very good, but let them walk before advising them to jump off a cliff and fly. Everything you’ve said is 100% true, but if they’re struggling with wormwood they’re probably not regularly smacking dragonfly around and soloing bee queen. 

Honestly I wouldn’t recommend fighting bee queen with a beefalo until you’re extremely experienced, as 1000 health isnt really all that much, and the beefalo dying would be a lot of wasted time. You can tell when he’s low on health, i can too, but this guy is probably fairly new, and your advice should be skewed in that direction. A lot of people on this forum have that problem where they advise people who are probably new to just go kill a raid boss solo. 
 

To the OP, hoard healing resources to prep for deerclops and make sure you get some distance before you try to heal mid fight.

yep. Player ask "im diying from hunger" answere be like "dude kill toad it gives mushrooms and meat" xDD

[Mike23Ua]

13 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

Turn rot into compost as it basically combines 2 rot. 

Rot heal= 4hp

Compost (2 rot at a compost bin)=8hp

You'll abuse your fingers less and possibly avoid carpal tunnel. 

I’m gonna be honest there’s a lot of stuff I completely forget exists in the game from time to time- composting bin is one of those things.. But, loose rot works just fine for me for completely passive healing outside of Combat situations, during Combat- NEVER use Rot..

But if your just walking along and a random Merm smacks you after killing it some loose rot you’ll come across as you just walk about will heal that right on up (loose poop works too) if you have the ingredients for better healing- Obviously use that…

But if you need those other ingredients (such as Nitre for summer) it saves using up them for heals.

[HowlVoid]

4 hours ago, Copyafriend said:

 

That wasn't advice, it was a recommended challenge.

Above that is my advice on a varied amount of healing options as well as general tips for early exploration.

[Bird Up]

rot is amazing and heals 4hp. so having tons of lightbulbs if you are exploring caves is good.

[RichNCrispy]

21 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

don't starve

*Pulls out notebook* DON’T starve

[QuQuasar]

9 hours ago, Copyafriend said:

your tips are very good, but let them walk before advising them to jump off a cliff and fly. Everything you’ve said is 100% true, but if they’re struggling with wormwood they’re probably not regularly smacking dragonfly around and soloing bee queen.

To be fair, I do both of those things regularly, just not in the first year and not without healing. I'm more a "marble suits and dragon pies" type of player.

Thanks for the tips: I did pretty well yesterday getting a Wormwood game started.

Ironically, by almost any standard, it was actually an *awful* start. I didn't have any flint by the time I left the starter biome, and spent the next few days mapping the shoreline without tools, backpack or armour. This meant leaving a ton of important resources behind (most painfully, I couldn't knock down pig heads, pick cactus, or kill clockworks), and I wasn't able to catch any fish to get blooming going early.

I lived on red mushrooms and spider meat garnished with green mushrooms. That allowed me to save my carrots.

I was able to get an early stack of rot by not eating any of my starting berries, and kept myself alive by making space in my inventory for resources I normally wouldn't even pick up at that stage of the game (nitre, ash, manure and spoiled fish) and using the rot when I ran out of salves. This was even more painful since I didn't find chester till day 10, which meant leaving behind even more important resources. 

So yeah, not exactly an optimal start, but I'm confident in my ability to survive now that I have a base. Glommer will protect me.

[Mike23Ua]

Wormwood can eat normally bad foods without suffering health penalty, so munch those yummy looking Redcaps they won’t hurt you. (Seriously they won’t.. at least not as Wormwood..) easy food from a fairly common resource great for multiplayer- you can save all the non harmful foods for non wormwoods, and just live off what would normally be bad.

[Cheggf]

If you want to impress your friends, wow the ladies, and be the man celebrities wish they could be you can sprint to the ruins, Metal Gear past the clockworks, and scavenge the labyrinth chests for bat bats.  

[HowlVoid]

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

scavenge the labyrinth chests for a chance at bat bats, but you'll probably just get spears and log suits.

Honestly kinda sad how terrible Labyrinth loot is. I usually never go for chest that are out of the way, then again, the labyrinth isn't exactly hard.

Labyrinth rework when.

[FourthLess]

Just don't get hit lol.