The state of Webber/Wurt

[Catcoon-pop]

So i decided to make my second thread about the character i play the most: Webber! (and how weak he is compared to the other minion centric character)

On paper it seems pretty simple. Webber trades out of combat utility for more control of his minions and in combat utility, compared to Wurt who has less control of her minions but more utility out of combat. But the thing is, her minions can be pretty good in combat as well, even without the merm king. the fact that merms kite enemy's increases their survivability by a lot. Webbers spiders can reach the same survivability with nurse spiders, but that requires time and resources (both of which are in short supply in dst).

Also, Wurt's perks go beyond just her minions, which I cant really say for Webber. Also the more i play post-rework Webber, the more i realize that the control he has over his minions doesn't really matter that much. they feel more QoL changes.

What i cant decide on if this is a Wurt problem or a Webber problem. So this thread is basically discussing what you think on the situation, because I honestly don't know that much about Wurt and wanna hear other people have to say about it. :}

 

[Scrimbles]

Quote

Wurt's perks go beyond just her minions

...They do?

She has pigs 2.0, and the Merm King which is just a stat stick.

Webber works because he was the first to have the minion swarm gimmick, and I think that was fine, but Wurt lacks any cohesion, and interrupts Webbers gimmick without doing much on her own.

Neither character has any weakness that makes them need their minions, and Wurt has no synergy with farming or base building despite having a vegetarian only diet and the ability to build a couple of merm houses.

Webbers gimmick was fine, but then Wurt copies it without doing enough to stand out.

[Hornete]

18 minutes ago, Catcoon-pop said:

Webbers spiders can reach the same survivability with nurse spiders, but that requires time and resources (both of which are in short supply in dst).

I would argue Wurt is much more time and resource intensive, Ya gotta spend a lot of time..

1. Getting logs and refining into boards

2. Fishing(and regular fishing is absolutely abhorrent and tedious compared to ocean fishing)

3. Getting the food to befriend merms

whilst Webber you only really need to wait 20 days or so iirc to get a spider queen from a T3 den(You could also die and haunt a T3 den to forcefully spawn a queen) and once you've got the snickerdoodle bp you only really need honey now since mm and silk are gonna be in major excess all the time as Webber.

 

I think the only thing I dislike out of Webbers rework is there isnt enough of a distinction between the spider types in practice. Cave spiders would be really neat for their shield but...when they shield the enemy will just go for the next spider that attacks them and ignore the shielded cave spider. It could be really neat if enemies kept aggro on shielded cave spiders. Just that little bit of distinction between the spider types would be great.

[HowlVoid]

I think Webber needs some utility on some of his spiders.

I was hoping that water striders could pick things up in the ocean but Klei seems to be against it. I think they want to keep Webber a battle only minion master which is a little bland imo.

I played a lot of Wurt when I first bought her and I still feel scammed. 

I think it's ok if her merms are more utility focused to separate them from the vanilla minions and Webber. Add things like fishing, farming, etc for her merms.

Outside of battle Wurt seems really weak imo. If she could have fishes on her that gave really small passive perks, that would be pretty cool. Like a rare glowing coelacanth that can glow in her pockets (you can feed a rabbit a glowberry for the same effect). This would give her a unique end game, collecting super rare and exotic fish pets. (The weather fish are a really cool concept that I think could be expanded).

Oh and merm king is bland.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

i hate that people always say "merms are pigs2.0" that 2.0 makes the difference since pigs are way more expensive and only chops or fight for short periods of time before they stop because "dusk too scary" while wurt can amass a 24h army/workers with just seeds, fish,  stonefruit or any other fruit/veggie

the king is bad designed tho and the recipe makes no sense (why kelp instead of reeds??)

[Catcoon-pop]

35 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

...They do?

She has pigs 2.0, and the Merm King which is just a stat stick.

Webber works because he was the first to have the minion swarm gimmick, and I think that was fine, but Wurt lacks any cohesion, and interrupts Webbers gimmick without doing much on her own.

Neither character has any weakness that makes them need their minions, and Wurt has no synergy with farming or base building despite having a vegetarian only diet and the ability to build a couple of merm houses.

Webbers gimmick was fine, but then Wurt copies it without doing enough to stand out.

I 100% agree. Some of the perks that go beyond her minions are durians and kelp frond don't make Wurt lose sanity (pretty much ripping off the fact that Webber can eat monster meat with no consequences), she can read wicker bottoms books to gain or lose sanity (for some reason), bunnymen are neutral to her, and she walks faster on marsh turf. Most of these don't synergize with her at all, and i honestly don't know why she has these. It feels like someone just slapped on a bunch ok-ish upsides, added an overpriced strength buff, and a pointless downside to Webber and said "Here's a new character". I'm being bit harsh here, I feel like Wurt was a pretty good idea, they just really flunked the execution and it makes here seem like an uninspired Webber ripoff.

[Echsrick]

i wonder, what if wurt would be able to build differend kinds of merm houses wich spawn a special merm depending on house? like some sort of worker house wich spawns merm workers wich are faster in choping and mining things then other merms, or fishermerm from ship wreck, wich sometimes would go to a pond and go fishing, and some other kinds of differend kinds of merms to do many differend things they cna do, maybe that would be an idea

[Catcoon-pop]

44 minutes ago, Hornete said:

I would argue Wurt is much more time and resource intensive, Ya gotta spend a lot of time..

1. Getting logs and refining into boards

2. Fishing(and regular fishing is absolutely abhorrent and tedious compared to ocean fishing)

3. Getting the food to befriend merms

whilst Webber you only really need to wait 20 days or so iirc to get a spider queen from a T3 den(You could also die and haunt a T3 den to forcefully spawn a queen) and once you've got the snickerdoodle bp you only really need honey now since mm and silk are gonna be in major excess all the time as Webber.

 

I think the only thing I dislike out of Webbers rework is there isnt enough of a distinction between the spider types in practice. Cave spiders would be really neat for their shield but...when they shield the enemy will just go for the next spider that attacks them and ignore the shielded cave spider. It could be really neat if enemies kept aggro on shielded cave spiders. Just that little bit of distinction between the spider types would be great.

I agree. This would make planning for battles as Webber actually strategic instead of just brainlessly spamming nurse spiders.

48 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

I was hoping that water striders could pick things up in the ocean but Klei seems to be against it. I think they want to keep Webber a battle only minion master which is a little bland imo.

Me too, i was thinking they were gonna be good utility for moving spiders across the ocean but that really only comes up for the lunar island boss.

[Mysterious box]

2 hours ago, Catcoon-pop said:

On paper it seems pretty simple. Webber trades out of combat utility for more control of his minions and in combat utility, compared to Wurt who has less control of her minions but more utility out of combat. But the thing is, her minions can be pretty good in combat as well, even without the merm king. the fact that merms kite enemy's increases their survivability by a lot. Webbers spiders can reach the same survivability with nurse spiders, but that requires time and resources (both of which are in short supply in dst).

Wurt requires alot more resources to try and match webber's combat utility as it means she has to keep pumping food into her followers and can be heavily punished by forever losing her follower should she fail to do so. Also you need to consider even normal spiders have more combat value than merms outside of boss battles they'll lock their targets effectively increasing their survivability. Webber can also use pigs to harvest wood matching wurt in that category via the one man band.

[abrocator]

My impression is that Webber is stronger early and mid game (whatever mid game means) while Wurt has more late-game potential.

• Recruiting spiders en masse is easy and cheap: got monster meat?
• You can ruins rush by recruiting spiders in the maze
• Nurse spiders are accessible after a little time and are cheap to make
• Need to make a stupid king in order to unlock the best merms for fighting
• Stone fruit is plentiful late game and can be used to recruit merms
• After a while you can make at least one arena with a lot of flortifications which you can use to fight bee queen/shadow bosses/eyes of terror.  No upkeep needed; only a lot of stone fruit

But I imagine that one might, as a Wurt player, get to a point where you just ask… now what?  The true end game for Wurt which no one else can do is to conquer the map with royal carpets (because you can’t feed a king which is on the other side of the map or in another shard (the latter is in fact impossible)) and flortifications (because the idiots just get stuck somewhere if you take them too far on your adventures).  But at that point everything might be too easy.  So you spent hundreds of days building your empire in order to match the power of characters like Wanda or Wolfgang.  And then you might be so powerful that the game goes from geing a grind (gotta make boards boards boards and collect fish fish fish to give to the pig king for 80 rot and one tentacle spot) to just being too easy all of a sudden.  But that’s just speculation since I haven’t got to that point myself.

3 hours ago, Catcoon-pop said:

Webbers spiders can reach the same survivability with nurse spiders, but that requires time and resources (both of which are in short supply in dst).

You either haunt a tier three den until it makes a queen or wait until a queen spawns and then wait for a nurse spider.  Then you just need honey (!) on top of the stock resources in order to make the most powerful spider bro.

Compare to Wurt: You need a king which requires 10 pig skin plus some other more easily acquired materials.  Then you need the ridiculously expensive flortifications (20 wood, 6 grass, some twigs, two flint, one tentacle spot).  Then you need at least two of these things (king + merm village) since they don’t transfer between shards (caves and overworld).  But maybe (probably) more if you want to fight stuff in more than one part of the map since merms will just unload on their way home if they stop following you, leaving their homes forever vacant until you find them and babysit them while they walk home (of course they couldn’t use their superior running speed to get back home…).

[Scrimbles]

2 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

i hate that people always say "merms are pigs2.0" that 2.0 makes the difference since pigs are way more expensive and only chops or fight for short periods of time before they stop because "dusk too scary" while wurt can amass a 24h army/workers with just seeds, fish,  stonefruit or any other fruit/veggie

the king is bad designed tho and the recipe makes no sense (why kelp instead of reeds??)

But what do they do that Pigs can't? Why does Wurt need them?

[Echsrick]

4 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

But what do they do that Pigs can't? Why does Wurt need them?

merms dont get scared by dusk and night and if mermking is alive, they will alsol not be scared of boss scream attacks, and they are alsol stronger then pigs, alsol be able to mine rocks and marble

[Baark0]

wurt's basically ur standard workshop enemy player mod, ie her whole thing is that she can befriend a specific enemy in the world and has some perks loosely related to what that enemy probably does

[Echsrick]

17 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

wurt's basically ur standard workshop enemy player mod, ie her whole thing is that she can befriend a specific enemy in the world and has some perks loosely related to what that enemy probably does

nah, by that webber is alsol one, and its no way a mod, other wise it would be way stronger

[ArubaroBeefalo]

33 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

But what do they do that Pigs can't? Why does Wurt need them?

idk you but i dont use pigs because of how inconfortable (useless) they are while as wurt you can hire merms when ever you want and without needing to waste meat

pd. mine

[Blunty_x]

I've got 350 days on Wurt, and can agree she isn't anything special. Her Merms are great and not that hard to make when you have a merm king and a couple merms in the marsh biome, but other than that she is a regular character. Dried kelp is a weaker jerky, stone fruit and your set, or honey. Healing is the only issue but if you can auto grow potatoes or dragonfruit your set.. but trail mix and butterfly muffins aren't bad. I personally am using blue mushrooms and dried kelp..

 

On her so called upsides..she gets wet and isn't affected like other characters.. I think that's actually a great perk but! Once you reach full wetness you start to freeze kinda nullifying it imho..remove that in any season but winter. The speed boost in theory is great, but I'm not basing in the swamp..reeds can't be relocated and clearing tentacles is tedious depending on the amount. The sanity on books is pointless, and so is the fish buffs..cause thermals are a thing..but fishing is cheaper I guess?? She needs some tweaks for sure..

I guess I would propose removing freezing from full wetness unless in winter...as proposed above, different fish offer different buffs not just hot and cold plus sanity gain when thermals and tamos are a thing, this would make it viable to explore fishing with Wurt..cause a DMG increase fish I would definitely fish for that. Otherwise the speed boost is fine, you could just transplant marsh turf to important fights like bee queen, dfly, and Klaus, toadstool even..cause I still prefer to use cobblestones for my main base lol. 

[Mysterious box]

35 minutes ago, Dr.Medic said:

merms dont get scared by dusk and night and if mermking is alive, they will alsol not be scared of boss scream attacks, and they are alsol stronger then pigs, alsol be able to mine rocks and marble

Very few bosses have a fear move Iess than 5 if I remember right, and while merms don't stop going at night you don't need a specific character with pigs and it's not like most people spend a full 8 mins chopping wood at a time in most cases outside of using bearager. Mining is a ok niche but more often than not the time spent going back to get the merms for mining could just be spent mining yourself it doesn't even take long.

 

11 minutes ago, Dr.Medic said:

nah, by that webber is alsol one, and its no way a mod, other wise it would be way stronger

Webber's flavor perks make him nearly a 1 to 1 copy of a spider which goes a long way in making him feel far more natural than Wurt even in little flavor like Webber coming out of the den with the warriors if a spider is hurt on the webbing. Wurt on the other hand has nothing that really makes her feel like a merm aside from no being attacked on sight.

 

18 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

idk you but i dont use pigs because of how inconfortable (useless) they are while as wurt you can hire merms when ever you want and without needing to waste meat

pd. mine

Pigs aren't used as much as followers because there isn't a character pushing for it some don't even know you can also meat is much more filling and abundant than the alternatives in most cases.

[Mike23Ua]

Wurt has more HP then Wolfgang *trollface* she also has an army of loyal followers and a built in speed buff, She good.. Florp.

Comparing her to Webber however.. doesn’t even compare, for WURT.. she needs to build her own unique type of Follower (Aka a better version of Merms) and she also has to have an annoying Merm King active in order to have those special followers even spawn, As Webber.. you can just go hug Mama Spider and get as many followers as you want for basically free..

Nurse, Stryder, Warrior, Cave..

For Wurt to even feel anywhere CLOSE klei would need to add new areas to the game with different types of Merms she can Hire.

For now though: Her Gimmick doesn’t even come close to matching Webbers.

And Webber also doesn’t need anymore perks added to him either, he’s already in a dangerously good spot, especially with the ability to simply add silk to a spider den to upgrade its tier level or shave it with a razor/sleep in it like a free tent to downgrade its tier level.

I absolutely love Wurt… but let’s not pretend she comes anywhere close to Webber.. I can’t sleep inside the Merm Houses.. and there’s only one type of Merm to use unless I build the better one myself and keep a stupid veggie eating ungrateful King around to get her better followers.

She good, but could be better.. Florp.

[Owlrust]

I'd love to see more interaction with her Merm Guard identity, and maybe play a bit more into the  aspect. Kind of like a mini Hamlet..or..Mermlet

Like, a horn that calls a bunch of merm guards to her aid, special swamp monsters to ride into battle with, banners that boost ally merms in a range (similar to the Forge), different kinds of merms to trade/interact with, trading with the king for specific items, and more structures that give (albeit primitive) a sense of a medieval town to play into her creative fantasies.

[Dextops]

i really feel like their roles should've been switched with webber being more resource gathering oriented and wurt more combat oriented since merms are much more versatile with their animations to do a lot of things with it while spiders are just a ball. Spiders also could've picked up twigs and grass but since merms are more resource gathering oriented maybe that could be given to them instead making them pick up 10 of each item and having them drop it at your feet

[Scrimbles]

6 hours ago, Dr.Medic said:

merms dont get scared by dusk and night and if mermking is alive, they will alsol not be scared of boss scream attacks, and they are alsol stronger then pigs, alsol be able to mine rocks and marble

Does Wurt lack in combat ability? Not at all, infact she is better than most due to her high speed on marsh turf, and high stats with the merm king.

Does she have a hard time gathering materials? No more than most other characters, and she hardly  needs much that merms can provide to buils her structures.

 

So, she doesn't need Merms, has no exclusive combo with them vs an average player with pigs, and she doesnt even have the excuse of being unique, which is what used to shield Webbers design from criticism.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

8 hours ago, Scrimbles said:

Does Wurt lack in combat ability? Not at all, infact she is better than most due to her high speed on marsh turf, and high stats with the merm king.

and is even better if you use merms. Few stone fruit and your dps increase a lot

is like saying that regular wolfgang doesnt need being mighty because he is already stronger than wilson with his 200 hp

8 hours ago, Scrimbles said:

Does she have a hard time gathering materials? No more than most other characters, and she hardly  needs much that merms can provide to buils her structures.

no but is like saying that woodie or maxwell dont need their form/miners to mine minerals because they can do it as good as wilson with a pickaxe

8 hours ago, Scrimbles said:

So, she doesn't need Merms, has no exclusive combo with them vs an average player with pigs, and she doesnt even have the excuse of being unique, which is what used to shield Webbers design from criticism.

not every character perk should have sinergies behind (the combo is buffing them if you feed the king for few stonefruit). That would show just a lack of creativity where every perk should be bounded in someway 

wurt is just a merm wilson and that is what is coold about her. Needing merms for the sake of needing them would be dumb, is an avaraible tool which comes on handy for megabasers

i like her simplicity and QoL perks. Is a fun character but i get that people want more complex or intrincate mechanics but i dont think that kind of desing was the goal of this character

the only thing i miss are worth present from her king and fixes to followers. They can always expand her fish affinity (for example an electric eel that gives a small damage boost and forge wx's passive) or more kind of merms (that would be lovely and will expand her "make a merm kingdom" lore)

[Scrimbles]

5 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

and is even better if you use merms. Few stone fruit and your dps increase a lot

is like saying that regular wolfgang doesnt need being mighty because he is already stronger than wilson with his 200 hp

no but is like saying that woodie or maxwell dont need their form/miners to mine minerals because they can do it as good as wilson with a pickaxe

not every character perk should have sinergies behind (the combo is buffing them if you feed the king for few stonefruit). That would show just a lack of creativity where every perk should be bounded in someway 

wurt is just a merm wilson and that is what is coold about her. Needing merms for the sake of needing them would be dumb, is an avaraible tool which comes on handy for megabasers

i like her simplicity and QoL perks. Is a fun character but i get that people want more complex or intrincate mechanics but i dont think that kind of desing was the goal of this character

the only thing i miss are worth present from her king and fixes to followers. They can always expand her fish affinity (for example an electric eel that gives a small damage boost and forge wx's passive) or more kind of merms (that would be lovely and will expand her "make a merm kingdom" lore)

So, shes just really badly designed, and wholey unoriginal.

Its not about complexity, its about quality game design, where a characters upsides and downsides loop back on each other.

Fundamentally, Wurt is the same as Webber, and instead of bringing something unique to the table, she just devalues Webbers once unique gimmick.

[Mike23Ua]

32 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

So, shes just really badly designed, and wholey unoriginal.

Its not about complexity, its about quality game design, where a characters upsides and downsides loop back on each other.

Fundamentally, Wurt is the same as Webber, and instead of bringing something unique to the table, she just devalues Webbers once unique gimmick.

Wurt actually has her own unique gameplay, “strong grip” is a Wurt perk that shouldn’t be easily overlooked, it essentially allows Wurt to run around at maximum Wetness without her tools “slipping” out her inventory AND after playing Wurt for many many hours I “Forget” that tools sliding out your Inventory is an actual game mechanic until it happens again.

In team play this translates to Wurt not even needing an Eyebrella which means, it can be given to someone like WX78 or Wes (whom the game is programmed to target with lightning strikes after his rework now..) who may need it more,

Wurts Gimmick isn’t anywhere on the same level with Webbers.. but since you want to to make that comparison- Webbers Gimmick wasn’t unique when even WES could Hire an army of Loyal Pigs, Bunnymen or Rock Lobsters.

Having followers do stuff for you isn’t “New” and it wasn’t ever even unique to Webber..

I feel like people are just hating upon Wurt in the same way they Hated on Willow.. both Characters are good, and fun- but people still give Willow a bad rep because “oooooo spooky lighter!”

[ArubaroBeefalo]

41 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

So, shes just really badly designed, and wholey unoriginal.

 

nobody said that she is original. Is just a merm wilson, what did you expected? when i bought her i was expecting just that. About bad desing... idk what would you want from her

41 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

Its not about complexity, its about quality game design, where a characters upsides and downsides loop back on each other.

 

is boring when every character have that kind of desing, glad you like it but i dont. I dont like when characters like wendy dimiss her downside by her gameplay loop or walter with his range weapon poorly trying to dimiss his sanity mechanics, or how wigfrids "only eats meat" diet is dimissed by "you get all the stats you would need to work to get with meat dishes by just holding F" etc. Repeating over and over that kind of formula only shows a poor desing and a lack of ideas. How stupid will be to add farming perks to her "only eats veggies diet" just to create a loop and dimiss her downside (even more since with rwys updates that downside is kinda an upside)...

is wormwood poorly designed because his downside isnt attached to his upsides in a game loop?

the only poorly designed thing is her king which also is added because potato and i dont think it fits the thematic plus his loot table and recipe is awful ( and just a way to force you to go into the ocean instead of addidng actual interesting things to motivate us to sail). they could remove her king and warrior merms and i will be ok since i bough a merm character, i dont care if she has special merms or a fairy tale king to buff her and give her rot, i just bough her to play as a merm and that is achieve with some extra things

41 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

Fundamentally, Wurt is the same as Webber, and instead of bringing something unique to the table, she just devalues Webbers once unique gimmick.

fundamentally webber was created as "what if wilson was a spider" and wurt followed that desing by "what if wilson was a merm"

i guess webber is also poorly designed because he doesnt have any kind of combo or whatever you look for these kind of characters

i dont think wurt devaluates webber, wurt doesnt have healer followers, ranged atack followers neither access to that much followers which are found in almost every biome meanwhile merms are only in the surface swamp. Plus weeber gain a lot of control over them also the ability of storing them in his inventory to cross dangerous zones safely or to save them in bundles to use on demand thing that affects wurt. You could say that having bunnymens devaluates weeber's main perk because he is focused on dps like bunnymens while wurt has less access to dps but has more utility

is nice that you dont like her but i dont get your opinion outside of not liking her which is fine, there is colours for every taste

 

 

edit. i think that the problem with wurt is how poor seems to be in paper but when you play her for long you appreciate her perks, is one of the most fun characters for long runs since is confortable and not a faceroll like others

i just wish that klei change how often seasonal fish appears since right now is a pain to find them. All wurt problems arent wurt's fault but klei not fixing or balancing things like the fish problem mentioned, the stupid kelp requeriment for her king or mobs not going back to their houses (which affects every follower)