My view and expectations on WX 78 rework

[Dr. Ludvig]

Everyone knows that there aren't many characters to rework anymore. WX78, Wickerbottom, Wilson, and Maxwell. Each of these characters gets their rework sooner or later. In this post, however, I would like to focus on the subject of my favorite character - WX 78. This post will contain some of my thoughts and changes that I would like to see on the occasion of the rework of this character.
At the outset, I want to highlight two things:
1) This is only my opinion, everyone can have a different opinion about it, so please respect my vision of this rework, and I will respect your
2) English is not the language I use on a daily basis, so sorry for bad English
So let's get started!
1) Rework of the WX 78 upgrade system
For me, it's one of those things that needs to change and that's why ... I totally throw the current upgrade system out of the bin. Nor is it hard to see that WX is not the only robot in Constant. For this reason, I want to base my new upgrade system on getting parts from other Clockworks and adding them to WX 78. How would that look like? By killing a specific Clockwork, we would have a chance on parts of that specific opponent. With these parts, one could create an upgrade that would give WX some skill that the Clockwork has. WX would only have 2 slots for upgrades, so the player would have to find a combination of upgrades to suit his playstyle. As for the upgrades themselves - each Clockwork would offer a different skill:

a) Knight - would offer an increase in attack speed (NO MOVING SPEED - ATTACK SPEED), each upgrade of this skill would slightly increase this attack speed bonus
b) Bishop - would give WX a new ability which would be a ranged attack similar to the one Bishop has. Each upgrade of this skill would increase DMG and will reduce time to next use of it.
c) Rock - would give WX the ability to slam into the ground, which would stun enemies in a small area for a short time. Each upgrade of this skill would increase the area of effect of this skill, and slighty incearses a duration of stun.

Each skill could be crafted in the new WX tab - the Upgrades Tab. Crafting and upgrading a given skill would require gears, electrical doodads and parts from specific Clockworks. Certain skills would, of course, be mutually exclusive.

2) New Clockworks
In my opinion, the WX rework is the perfect time to add not one, not two, but as many as THREE new Clockworks. This would give us the complete number of pieces needed to play chess. (I would like to point out that I am aware that the basic version of Don't Starve has 8 characters, which is as many as pieces, Clockwork Kinght, Bishop and Rock are opponents, and Maxwell and Charlie are King and Queen). Namely, Clocwork Pawn, Clockwork King and Clockwork Queen could be added to the game. My ideas for these opponents are something like this:

Clockwork Pawn - Would look like a royal guard. I mean - it would be a steampunk styled robot wearing golden armor. His weapons would be a shield and a sword. The "defensive position" of this Clockwork would be his unique skill - a provoked Clockwork Pawn would cover himself with a shield and slowly move towards the player. In this state, Clockwork Pawn would have 60% armor, and when the player attacks the shielded Clocwork Pawn, they would take 40% of their damage. There is a way to defeat him though - when Clockwork Pawn would make an attack, he would momentarily move out of defense, giving the player time to deal damage without risking deflecting the damage. After some time a Clockwork Pawn will return to his defensive position, so player would be careful with avoiding taking damege from Clockwork Pawn and his shield. At the same time, it would be possible to obtain parts of this Clockwork in order to gain a new skill - block. In a block, WX would have 50% armor, the enemy would take 10% of its damage, and WX would be significantly slowed down. Each upgrade would increase the amount of armor and the amount of reflected damage.

3) Clockwork King and Clockwork Queen
This is! The royal couple deserves their own point on this list!

A) Clockwork King and Clocwork Queen would be new bosses to encounter in a new structure that can be found by exploring Constant - the Royal Gardens. These gardens would be a new type of set piece and would consist of a large number of marble trees, a chessboard as the floor, and in the very center of the location there would be two marble thrones - the Clockwork King and Clocwork Queen thrones, around which the bosses would walk. Besides, there would be other Clockworks in the structure itself, but they would be completely neutral to the players.

The Clockwork King would be wearing a long red cloak, a large crown encrusted with various gems, and in his hand he was holding a staff also studded with many gems.

The Clockwork Queen would wear a gown very similar to the Queen of Pigs in Don't Starve Hamlet, a crown with many gems, but a bit smaller than Clockwork Kings crown and a staff that looked more like a club than a symbol of power.

Both are of course stylized as steampunk robots.

B) Bosses would also be neutral and ... TALK BETWEEN EVERYWHERE!!! Exactly! I wish these mechanical rulers had some history and some reathey choked on the players. Each monarch would have his own character: The king would be strong with words, but quite cowardly when it comes to fighting. He would consider the islands at sea as his colonies, and he would consider himself superior to the other kings of Constant (king of pigs, merms and Crab King). The queen, on the other hand, would be pessimistic about the ideas of her husband - the king, and would complain all the time about boredom in the gardens. At the same time, they would react differently to certain characters. For example: Lords would recognize Maxwell as the former Constant King, WX would treat as one of his serf, Winona would admire for her abilities and the machines she builds, Wickerbottom would point out that she should be more careful with whom she shares her knowledge, because THEY don't like it when someone thinks too much etc.

C) Time for something interesting. To fight this "double boss"! Exactly! "Double Boss"! For those who, for some reason, don't know how to play chess in real life - the game is all about capturing the opponent's king. The fight with this boss would be the same - kill the Clockwork King. The problem, however, would be the Clockwork Queen to fight the Clockwork King side by side. If the player had defeat the Clockwork Queen first, the queen would only be knocked out, and after a long while she would be back in the fight with 33% of her starting HP. As for the start of the fight. The bosses are neutral at first, to start the fight you have to attack them, but be careful, because all the Clockworks in the Royal Gardens will immediately rush to defend their king and queen.

D) Bosses would have different fighting styles. The king, being the weakest piece on the board, will try to escape from direct combat and will try to support the queen, who will press against the player without hesitating. The Clockwork King will try to keep a safe distance from the player and will cast spells with his staff. His attack pool would be as follows:
- when the player is on the Clockwork King for a long time, it will make a blast of steam that pushes the player away from the king
- The Clockwork King uses a red gem form his staff to perform a laser attack in a straight line towards the player
- Clocwork King uses a blue gem from his staff to perform a laser attack that freezes everything in its path and deals little damage. It is an arc attack from left to right
- The Clockwork King uses a green gem from his staff to heal a certain amount of HP lost at himself or the queen

The Queen, on the other hand, is the strongest piece on the board, so without swinging, she will try to get and kill the player. Her attackers are:
- staff attack dealing AoE damage in a small radius
- The Clockwork Queen uses a purple gem from her crown to temporarily deprive the player of sanity
- Clocwork Queen uses yellow gem from her crown to temporarily blind the player with its glow
- Clockwork Queen uses an orange gem from her crown to temporarily increase attack and spell casting speed for yourself and the Clockwork King
The fight ends when you defeat the Clockwork King, otherwise the Clockwork Queen will keep returning to the fight at 33% of your starting HP and the fight will never end.

E) Last but not least - boss loot! Upon defeating the monarchs, they drop tons of gears, a few random gems, and have a chance to get their own unique items.

The Loot from Clockwork King is the Clockwork Staff, which is a staff to which you can put any gem at any time. An exemplary situation - when we go hunting for a boss, we put in the staff a blue gem to be able to freeze the enemies, but at some point we give up the fight and have to run away. Then, on the run, we change the blue gem to purple and telport to our base. Unfortunately, this scepter would have little damage, but it would be possible to repair it with gears.

The queen would drop a new ranged weapon - the musket. To be able to use this weapon, the player would have to load at least 5 gunpowder into it. The musket would then be asking 60 DMG. However, the player can load more gunpowder. Each piece over 5 would give 15% more damage, but at the same time increase the chance that the weapon will explode in the hands of the character by 10%. With 5 gunpowder loaded, the chance of a weapon exploding in your hands is 0%

And that, unfortunately, is all I have to say about my expectations for the WX 78 rework. I hope that at least some of my ideas will turn out to be relevant, but most of all I hope that this idea will be warmly received by the community. I also warmly encourage you to share your opinion about the miom idea for the WX 78 rework!

[UbiAnomaly]

Great ideas, but this would definitely fit better in an actual content update than a rework. The new clockwork piece ideas sound great (the king boss hiding behind the queen is one of my favorite suggestions I've seen on this forum), if a little dissimilar to Klei's usual enemy design.

I do like the idea of WX's upgrades being more linked to killing clockworks than consuming a valuable resource though. Maybe the recipes could be unlocked by killing the clockworks similar to Webber needing to tame spiders before crafting switcherdoodles.

[Ludovicus]

Yeah, some interesting ideas here. It would certainly be nice if one single WX wouldn't easily eat up all the gears in a world lol.

I have a suggestion to add too: I've always wondered why trinkets aren't really used much outside PK and this would maybe be a good moment to give 'em uses. Upgrading WX should require some Frazzled Wires, maybe even Melty Marbles (as broken clockworks drop them). Maybe he could use some other trinkets as source of "iron" and other parts, such as the "Beaten Beater", "Lying Robot", "Tiny Rocketship" and "Bent Spork", as all of them can make some sense to be used (they could be disassembled/turned into gears/more Frazzled Wires). These are things that should probably be relatively easy to implement.

So, his new tab with his upgrades could require similarly to what was stated by OP: a couple gears, a couple electrical doodads, maybe some new items specific to each clockwork?, some Frazzled Wires, some Melty Marbles (depending on the upgrade).

It would be interesting if he could make gears as well. It would give him a new early game interesting mechanic: being able to not only upgrade himself, but make a couple fridges to the early game bases without needing to fight clockworks. In this situation, he could require trinkets like "Lying Robot" or "Tiny Rocketship" and maybe one Frazzled Wire to directly make gears (as if he was disassembling those trinkets, needing no science), and also be able to make gears from a more renewable resource like Frazzled Wires together with a good quantity of some other resources like gold (through the Alchemy Engine). These trinkets aren't exactly likely to get early on (depends on RNG), so the world wouldn't overflow with them. At most, a WX would just have a little bit more chance of indirectly getting a gear from digging up graves.

Them being able to make their own gears would also make it easier for a world to have more than 1 WX eating 'em up. Public servers could have multiple WXs and multiple bases without sweating too much on the gear availability situation.

Being able to become more like one of the already existing robots (the clockworks) is an interesting idea, i like it and also welcome any new ranged abilities.

As for the bosses, that was quite creative and i also liked it. But i also agree that this could be an actual content update rather than a rework.

[Dr. Ludvig]

Honestly? I hadn't thought of using these items for the items in my WX New Upgrade System Proposition.

The general idea was this.

As you might guess, this system is based on acquiring new abilities from Clockworks, and then improving those abilities. Each ability would have 4-5 levels and each level would require more materials, but since you mentioned items like: Frazzled Wires, Beaten Beater, Lying Robot, Tiny Rocketship and Bent Spork... I must admit that I can see a use for them! Let's say cables would be needed as early as Tier 3 or even Tier 2 skill upgrade to keep WX from quickly becoming something that resembles a Doom Marine fairly early in the game.

When it comes to creating your own gears. I like this idea very much, but I would also give Winona and Wanda similar ability to deconstruct some items for gears (Winona was an employee of Wagstaff, so she knows a bit about mechanisms, and Wanda has to do with mechanisms in the form of clocks every day)

As for the new Clockworks. Perhaps I was a little carried away, but who wouldn't want to see all the chess pieces in the game, throw the first stone ?!
 

[Ludovicus]

12 hours ago, Dr. Ludvig said:

As for the new Clockworks. Perhaps I was a little carried away, but who wouldn't want to see all the chess pieces in the game, throw the first stone ?!

Certainly it was quite an interesting read. I liked the concept and it would be very nice to have a double boss battle like that hehe. A little too much for a single character refresh, but still something that could eventually show up in a update of its own.

Btw my mind was blown by the idea of a single staff in which you can socket gems instead of making new staffs with each gem, that's something the game should surely eventually have too.