The Warly Conundrum: Possible Ideas For A Warly Rework

[Mrloxi]

Warly certainly isn't the weakest character right now and there are other characters who need a rework more than he does, but i think the ideas i discuss later on in this post should help make him a better character.

Warly suffers from 4 main issues:

 

Warly is a switch character

Warly's 2 main strengths are his unique dishes and seasonings to go with them, but all of the useful dishes and seasonings require setting up farms to make the most of them (and ideally something like bundling wrap to stop spoilage). This generally leads to warly being a character who is weaker in the early game but much stronger the later your world goes. The problem with that is that by the time you'll have everything in place to really become powerful, you've probably already got a celestial portal up and running and can switch to him, make his dishes, spice them, bundle them, and switch back.

Warly struggles to tank but has no tools to help him kite

Due to his repeat dish penalty, warly will need an increased amount of healing if he wishes to tank during boss battles, and for longer/more damaging boss battles it's pretty much impossible to tank due to the extremely high cost of healing foods required. Despite this, nothing in his arsenal helps him to avoid taking damage except for garlic powder which gives a small damage reduction (not very helpful when food heals so little after the third one) and volt goat jelly - and pepper spice but the damage increase is rather small - which makes the fight quicker by boosting warly's damage (relies entirely on whether or not you get rain at an opportune time and goat horns are rather valuable).

Warly's strengths don't really synergise with his weaknesses and aren't very interesting

Warly's most interesting weakness is the fact that he needs to have variety in his diet in order to gain the most from foods, however none of his strengths really help that playstyle. Nearly all of his exclusive dishes requier very specific or rare ingredients to be made and warly doesn't really have any dishes that help him maintain a varied diet by providing alternate uses for common ingredients. Additionally, whilst those dishes and spices are anywhere near as unique as warly's varied diet (wolfgang gets a damage boost that doesn't rely on getting lucky with rain, wigfrid gains a damage reduction, woodie and maxwell are better at cutting trees, wurt is able to counter wetness). Because of this, i feel that warly's playstyle - the entire reason to pick him - is mostly about countering his weaknesses rather than making use of his strengths.

Warly's remembered dish penalty doesn't actually force him to have a varied diet

To get around the repeat penalty, all it takes is eating a few of the same dish all at once. 3 or 4 meatballs or 1 meaty stew and 1 meatball is enough to keep warly fed indefinitely, provided that you scarf them all down when warly's hunger gets very low. It doesn't incentivise variety, just binge eating.

 

Alternate solutions and why i don't think they'll work

I've seen some solutions proposed by others, and here's why i don't think they'll work:

Adding a speed boost dish for the portable crock pot

I feel that a speed boost that can be given to any player would be too powerful and would also only address the second issue. If anything, it would just further incentivise players to switch to warly and make his dishes before switching back.

Making warly's special dishes and spices edible only by him

Whilst this would stop him from only being a switch character, it fails to address the other issues and will kill all of his synergies with other characters, lowering his multiplayer usefulness significantly.

 

The solution

Warly should gain a stacking speed boost for each unique dish he remembers eating

 Something like a 5% speed boost per unique dish (could be changed depending on how balanced it is), up to 20% at 4 unique dishes was the solution i came up with. It would give him an edge in combat  (when played correctly) and provide an advantage that can't be gained from just switching to him, making all of his dishes and switching back. additionally by making the most interesting

Increase the repeat dish timer to 3 days

A 20% speed boost is a rather powerful thing to have, and warly's weaknesses would have to be strengthened to compensate. Increasing the repeat dish timer has 2 main effects: Firstly, it will end binge eating and force players to have variety in their diet. A warly at max hunger can last for 2.77 days until 0 hunger, so no matter how many meatballs you stack you'll still have 0.23 days worth of starving. This, along with the rewards for eating different dishes, should result in a carrot and stick design, where players are both punished for eating only 1 type of dish and rewarded for eating many different dishes. Secondly, it would actually strengthen warly's new upside by giving him a longer window to eat all those unique dishes in.

 

How would this affect the warly meta?

I reckon it would encourage greater diversification of dish choice for warly, and will also give some less popular dishes a little love. Take kabobs, for example: rarely does anyone ever make kabobs on purpose; they're basically just a worse version of meatballs. If these ideas were to be put in place, it would become a rather good dish for warly: easy to make and counts as a unique dish for the speed boost. There are many dishes like kabobs, that restore more than a recipe made from similar ingredients, and this change would make them just a little more useful - for warly, at least -

 

Other changes i think would be good

A way to see what dishes warly remembers

Perhaps through a UI element, or maybe even through having the cookbook item highlight recipes that warly remembers eating. It certainly could do with being a bit more useful

Water balloons should add wetness to all enemies, not just players and dragonfly

it's very annoying to have to wait for rain to get one of warly's dishes to work and i don't really see why it doesn't add wetness to mobs

Salt powder should give a flat health restoration bonus rather than a percentage boost

There's basically no reason to use salt on any food that doesn't restore 60 or more and even then 60 -> 75 isn't really that meaningful. Being able to make a 20HP food into a 35 or 40HP food would make it much better and more fitting considering how much of a hassle it is to get

Chef's pouch needs a buff

In its current state, chef's pouch is made almost completely useless as soon as you get a backpack (extremely early on), and utterly useless once you get an insulated pack (year 2 autumn or even year 1 winter if you get lucky with the loot stash). I think it should have its inventory boosted to 8 slots and have its spoilage reduction stay the same, but be useable only by warly. That way it can be better than the early game gear, but worse than lategame gear, a bit like wigfrid's battle helms and spears

 

Overall i think warly is in a decent place right now, but he could certainly be made better and that's why i made this post. If you have any other suggestions, counter arguments, or corrections; feel free to let me know in the replies.

[SuperDonuts]

Warly also lacks of sanity management. I don’t like to use the same wormhole 10 times to lower my sanity. Whereas other characters simply eat 2 green mushrooms.

Eating the same meal within the 2 or 3 days should also lower his sanity. 

[Owlrust]

3 hours ago, SuperDonuts said:

Warly also lacks of sanity management. I don’t like to use the same wormhole 10 times to lower my sanity. Whereas other characters simply eat 2 green mushrooms.

Eating the same meal within the 2 or 3 days should also lower his sanity. 

If you want to, It's more efficient to use a Lazy Deserter to lower sanity. Each time you channel the Lazy Deserter you lose 15 sanity; this way you can spam right-click to constantly lower your sanity very quickly. Can't say I personally agree with Warly losing sanity from repeat dishes though.