Early WX rework Overview

[Rhomer]

Circuits Rework

The new circuits system, as it stands, lowers WX's max potential trading them for utility and flexibility. There is no combination of circuits that can grant you the same stats as the previous 'peak' WX, in exchange, you get a better version of a certain stat. On paper, this seems good. Need to fight? swap into a 600 hp combination instead of 400 hp max stat, Need to run? +50% movement speed instead of temp overcharge speed, Cave diving? moggles instead of temp overcharge light, etc.etc. being able to specialize (meaning being more efficient than old WX for a specific task) for short periods of time is better than investing gears to be a jack-of-all-trades all of the time. 

However, swapping out loses all charges and each charge takes 1 minute and 30 seconds to charge to a total of 9 minutes to fully regain all charges. An in-game day is 8 minutes. So, to get all the charges back you'll need to wait more than a day to get the upgrades and another day to get back into the old circuits. No one is going to wait a full day just to swap into a niche specialization for a short time no matter how efficient it is. In the end everyone will just use the movement speed upgrade and never switch to anything else (maybe moggles). Need to fight? wait a day for 600 hp or kite with +50% ms? Need to stay warm/cool? wait a day to get freezing/overheat immunity or grab a thermal stone and get +50% ms etc. etc. Even if you were to gain charges through generators and lightning rods you'll need 12 charges, to swap into and swap back, and you'll lose 25% durability of each circuit removed, not to mention these things are stationary preventing you from swapping as the situation demands. 

Drawbacks

As a drawback WX now loses charges every 20 seconds when his wetness meter is above 20 or whenever he is starving. So, you better not get wet or you'll lose all your circuit perks. A lot of people think that as an addition to this, his base stats needs to be lowered to 100/100/100 in other to justify using the other stat circuits in return the number of circuit slots are to be increased. I don't think people will choose the stat circuits even if you lower his base stats, maybe if you were to make the other circuits more powerful but with a drawback lowering your base stats, then people might use the stat circuits to counter act them. Having 100 hunger or sanity matters very little, having 100 hunger means you can't just gorge all your food in one go, instead, you have to risk them getting stale before you're hungry enough to eat them, which doesn't matter since WX can eat stale food with no reduction. 100 sanity just means more nightmare creatures which not an objectively bad thing since nightmare fuel is important in any stage of the game. Having 100 health does have some effects when it comes to basic mobs, like spiders, as their number of hits to kill you changes from 8 hits (150 hp) to 5 hits (100 hp), for bosses however, you will still get 2 shot (75 damage) before they kill you unarmored. 

Suggestions

I'm not sure what direction klei intends to go with this WX rework. It seems to be intended to switch between upgrades depending on the situation since some of the upgrades are incredibly niche (freezing immunity, heat immunity, sanity aura, thorns) and no combination of circuits can make new WX have the same stats as old WX even without overcharge. It also seems that you're supposed to pick a set of upgrades and run with them semi-permanently since they have durability and swapping between circuits takes too much time. Personally, I prefer a more adaptive WX which can switch circuits on the fly. So here are some of my suggestions and some that I will just echo from others:

• There has to be a better way to gain charges like through sleeping or eating something that gains charges.
• Either more slots or increase the effect of some of the circuits, some of them are not worth their slot and movement speed is just too good for general use to want to swap to other circuits, in exchange, lower WX's base stats.
• A bundling wrap but for circuits, if swapping circuits does become appealing, It would take a lot of inventory space to carry different sets of circuits.
• A late game circuit extractor that removes circuit one at a time or removes circuits but does not deplete its charge.