Idea for general cooking buff that indirectly benefits Warly the most + extra chef pouch buff

[Wonz]

I've been wondering what Warly could have to not be character which gets picked to cook his dishes, wrap them and then switch back to other character.

I believe that in perfect world every character has some reason in endgame to not get switched so eagerly like winona after building her catapults or WX right after clearing ruins.

Warly has nothing passively going for him what would make it worthy to not switch him for someone else who could benefit from his food when he's switched.

Do you know how warm freshly cooked meal or fresh desert in real life is so much better than if it stayed to become cold or fluffy desert's structure went dry or more chewy?

What if it was thing in game that you get some bonus if you ate it within a minute after cooking. That would make warly's portable crockpot indirectly better since you could hang around with ingredients this way always taking advantage of the freshly cooked bonus and give more reason to hang around with ingredients instead of bringing already cooked food instead.

I want you to discuss together if it's worthy idea and what kind of buff fresh food could provide, maybe it could not be universal buff like extra sanity or extra health but vary based on type of food, that freshly cooked meaty stew would give you different bonus than fresh ice cream. This could even be a short lived movement speed to slightly compensate if traveling. I don't think movement speed from fresh food would make boss battles crazy easy since you'd have to cook every 1 minute to maintain it.

Also if you mind reading about some other buff idea related to chef pouch.
Pouch now has two hooks on sides which act like extra 2 backpack slots (slotted item is visible on the pouch itself which would probably call for need to reskin chef pouch a bit) showing what's in them and only things going in those slots would be dryable foods like meat, kelp and the Warly's portable kitchenware.

This way losing slot or two to pots wouldn't hurt (I play him lots and find myself choosing backpack over the pouch everytime), warly can't benefit much from dried food (Unless klei added some really nice recipes with dried ingredients) but now it would have very good reason to be accepted by other players who would have no use from it being able to carry kitchenware but can enjoy dried food.

[Owlrust]

7 minutes ago, Wonz said:

Pouch now has two hooks on sides which act like extra 2 backpack slots

7 minutes ago, Wonz said:

only things going in those slots would be dryable foods like meat, kelp and the Warly's portable kitchenware.

I genuinely love this idea. Being able to dry a couple foods on-the-go would make the Chef Pouch much more viable. Could still use an adjustment to its spoilage rate for foods though, 33% is just not a lot for only having 6 spots, 66% or 75% would be better while still not outclassing the Insulated Pack.

[Cheggf]

8 hours ago, Wonz said:

I believe that in perfect world every character has some reason in endgame to not get switched so eagerly like winona after building her catapults or WX right after clearing ruins.

Good voice, good sprite, good quotes, fun to play. Trying to balance everyone at all points of the game (the game which doesn't even have any explicit goals) is a fool's errand, completely impossible.

8 hours ago, Wonz said:

What if it was thing in game that you get some bonus if you ate it within a minute after cooking. That would make warly's portable crockpot indirectly better since you could hang around with ingredients this way always taking advantage of the freshly cooked bonus and give more reason to hang around with ingredients instead of bringing already cooked food instead.

That would need to be an insanely overpowered bonus to not only make Warly want to dedicate like 5 inventory slots to the pot and ingredients and wait around for them to cook instead of 1 or 2 to food that's ready to eat, but to make people not switch off of him because of it. And that's even assuming that bundling food doesn't pause the timer which I'm pretty sure it would.

If you want Warly to be less of a swap character just give him doubled duration of food effects. Asparagazpacho, volt goat chaud froid, honey seasoning, mushroom dish, etc, lasting twice as long would be a useful perk that's honestly more fun than powerful. Could also let him make a chef's specialty spice which is just the pepper and garlic spice combined to save a little inventory space.

8 hours ago, Wonz said:

Pouch now has two hooks on sides which act like extra 2 backpack slots (slotted item is visible on the pouch itself which would probably call for need to reskin chef pouch a bit) showing what's in them and only things going in those slots would be dryable foods like meat, kelp and the Warly's portable kitchenware.

This is a fun idea though.

[Ohan]

9 hours ago, Wonz said:

I believe that in perfect world every character has some reason in endgame to not get switched so eagerly like winona after building her catapults or WX right after clearing ruins.

Who cares? 

Q: is warly strong, unique and fun to play? 
A: yes.

nothing else matters. Stop obsessing over how other people choose to play. 

if you genuinely believe warly is not strong, unique or fun to play make suggestions to that end. Dont start with “switch character” that doesnt matter and is not a problem.

[Wonz]

 

4 hours ago, Ohan said:

Who cares? 

Perfection is impossible but it exists in our minds so we have to strive for it, you can' reach it but you can get closer for more satisfaction. If you're not aiming for the stars why even be?

4 hours ago, Ohan said:

Q: is warly strong, unique and fun to play? 
A: yes.

So was wolfgang but now he's better.

 

4 hours ago, Ohan said:

nothing else matters. Stop obsessing over how other people choose to play. 

How would those changes stop them from doing what they were doing before?

 

4 hours ago, Ohan said:

if you genuinely believe warly is not strong, unique or fun to play make suggestions to that end. Dont start with “switch character” that doesnt matter and is not a problem.

Remind me when I said he's not strong unique or fun because I don't remember. His food is strong but he himself is hungrier wilson who can't eat the same food over and over so you could cook, switch and play wilson which would be technically improvement.

[Ohan]

Im just tired of the “switch character” argument. Way too much text ahead 

Like i said if you believe current warly is not good enough and can be made more unique and fun literally by all means go for it when it comes to suggestions. I like your suggestion for the chef pouch in fact, i forgot to mention that in my first comment. Ive asked for chef pouch buffs several times in the past in addition to longer duration for the temperature dishes. 

But the goal of tweaks like this shouldnt be to make him “less of a switch character” but to bump up the less fully realized/utilized aspects of his kit and introduce new gameplay options for Warly players, like a longer duration on temp dishes would.

When it comes to “balance” warly or any other survivor should be approached as if switching does not exist. What is the current state of warly etc in that situation? What changes does he need if any? 

Character switching is not a bad thing. If a solo player wants to make use of warly’s dishes or wormwood’s bramble husk or nona’s catapults or maxwell’s minions while mainly playing as wendy why is that a bad thing? 

Warly is a supportive character by nature. His combat buffs are gonna be “better” on combat characters than himself. His resource gathering buff is gonna be “better” on woodie than on himself. that is what it means to be a support. Wormwood can farm endless giant potatoes and tomatoes with little effort while not being able to benefit from their healing. Etc. 

Warly brings a lot more to the table than just his dishes which can be shared and situationally used to better effect by other survivors. Like Cheggf mentioned in their first paragraph. Least of all he offers the player a super unique challenge in the form of his downside which drastically changes the way you approach the game similar to wormwood. 

if someone wants to make use of warly dishes (lets be real its only spicy VG-CF (and thats only because raid boss HP) and potentially honey spice) without dealing with his downside or if someone wants to switch to WW to quickly plant and harvest a field of crops before switching to someone else why is that a bad thing? Both Warly and Wormwood are still unique and fun characters on their own. 

DST uniquely happens to be a sandbox game were *a lot* of content is gated behind particular playable characters (unlike any other sandbox game i know of where the playable character is a blank slate with no fundamentally unique perks). Switching allows players to access everything the game has to offer regardless of which character they picked at the beginning.

[Dr. Safety]

2 hours ago, Ohan said:

When it comes to “balance” warly or any other survivor should be approached as if switching does not exist. What is the current state of warly etc in that situation? What changes does he need if any? 

Character switching is not a bad thing. If a solo player wants to make use of warly’s dishes or wormwood’s bramble husk or nona’s catapults or maxwell’s minions while mainly playing as wendy why is that a bad thing? 

I'm not sure I get your logic here. Of course, switching is an amazing tool for solo players, so that they can, for example, take up the role of gatherer in between their Wigfrid gameplay, or have the ability to use Warly's supportive kit on characters that can really benefit from it.

That being said, we shouldn't just ignore it when it comes to balance. If OP was saying that swapping should be nerfed, then I could see where you are coming from, but I'd argue that saying a character doesn't have enough reason to stay as them is perfectly valid criticism. Warly isn't nearly as bad as Winona in this regard, but as long as character swapping exists (which I'm not arguing that it shouldn't), it should be taken into account for balance purposes. I'd say the best way to go about it is leave the character's swapping abilities alone, but give them a little benefit for choosing to stay as that character.

As far as OP's suggestions, I like the chef pouch idea, but I don't think that the freshly made dish bonus is the right way to go about it. Inventory management is a tough skill to have as is, so I don't think it would be used by many people outside of base. I likely wouldn't carry around a bunch of ingredients when I could instead have more free inventory.

[Ohan]

1 hour ago, Dr. Safety said:

I'd argue that saying a character doesn't have enough reason to stay as them is perfectly valid criticism.

But that ultimately comes down to player preference/playstyle though. Not everyone thinks like this nor is it a self-evident sort of conclusion. DST is a sandbox survival game there is no singular right way of playing it. Plenty of people play winona and warly and every other survivor deemed a switch character by forumites, a subsection within a minority.

For warly to function as a switch character the player has to assemble the celestial portal and beat BQ. Not having to assemble the portal and kill BQ to make use of his dishes is not a small thing. 

1 hour ago, Dr. Safety said:

it should be taken into account for balance purposes.

Personally i just disagree. Simply because the game does not force you to make use of character switching at all. Its an optional luxury for players who want to play in that specific min-max way. Id actually argue first and foremost the purpose of the portal most likely was so you could switch to someone else for a while after uve grown bored of the survivor u initially picked or want to try someone else without starting a new world. The min-max playstyle of switching after just a few days for dishes or catapults etc was a byproduct of that from a subsection of players who enjoy that sort of playstyle. As such i dont think it needs to be taken into consideration when it comes to balance at all. 

Winona isnt subpar because shes a “switch character” but because she only has catapults and quickcrafting to her name and nothing else really worth mentioning.

Comparing Warly’s amazingly versatile kit and unique downside and playstyle to winona in any way is crazy imo.

Spoiler

Repeating myself: duration of his temperature dishes should be much longer and chef pouch could use a tweak like turning into an inventory minifridge like tackle receptacle (but limit to 1 in inventory) or something.

Not to make him “less of a switch” but to make gazpacho and dfruit salad a viable alternative against the elements for Warly and to make chef pouch not useless. 

i need my survivors to be fun and unique i dont need an extra trivial reason on top to keep me away from the celestial portal. 

if the argument for buffing something cant be upheld without the portal in mind then its unnecessary because the portal is an *extremely* optional luxury. 

[SuperDonuts]

I wanted to open a topic about a light warly buff idea I had.

one of warly quotes is something about being a butcher but nothing in the gameplay goes in the sense.

I think Warly should have a specific weapon to get bonus when he kills animal for meat (either extra damage, or extra loot).

And when I play Warly, I need to get a working farm, but nothing in its game play help this. I don’t want Wormwood’s power or Applied Horticulture, but a good cook shall be able to take advantage of a farm. Maybe a 10% chance to get 2 veggie on regular crop harvest, and/or 100% chance to to get 3 veggies on giant crop. And it would be a good complement to Wormwood (he plants, Warly harvests)

[BonesJrOfficial]

The issue with freshly cooked foods providing a buff is the same issue that already exists with warly being a switch character... bundling wrap completely stops spoilage. 

Love the idea of the chef pouch also acting as a drying rack.

I'd also love a Jerky specific dish. Some Jamaican Jerk, pepper and Jerky required. Big heal/sanity

[jan Mele]

On 3/30/2022 at 2:53 AM, Wonz said:

What if it was thing in game that you get some bonus if you ate it within a minute after cooking.

This is already in the game. Funny.