why is wickerbottom getting a rework/refresh

[h2mk]

because... she's getting old haha LOL

[Cheggf]

52 minutes ago, maxwell_winters said:

It still doesn't change the fact that tentacles are a hazard to other player

Everything Wurt does is a hazard to other players. Webber, too. They should probably be your focus if people accidentally wandering into dangerous areas other people set up is such a common occurrence. Their dangerous areas are much bigger, not dangerous to them, and the entirety of their kit instead of only one piece of it that isn't even always used. 

[-Variant]

14 hours ago, Cloakingsumo198 said:

Is this stated anywhere or just the observed pattern?

 

Stated by a dev a long time ago in one of the DST themed Discords and on a stream!

Basically, characters that have unique idle animations are considered "finished/done"!
Which means they're not gonna get full on reworks. (Subject to change as Klei does.)

This however, does not exempt them from getting touch ups to make them more open/fun to play! Such as the changes Wurt received. 

[ShadowDuelist]

I’ll probably make a whole new post about this because really, it’s saddening that all the people that don’t understand Wickerbottom at all May outcry for a total rework. But I’ll clarify a few things that people don’t seem to figure:

1) Sleepytime stories and “panflutes being renewable”

Even though you can renew panflutes, nobody ever (and shouldn’t) use panflutes on Their daily life to, for example, break a T3 nest you realized has been there for too long before it turns to queen. That would be wasteful and dumb for a panflutes, but STS is mostly free, so you can go ahead and do that, saving a lot of time for a small task like that with a character that does not have double damage. Or putting the frogs from frog rain to sleep to be able to do stuff as if they weren’t there, without having to resort to Wurt. Or removing the threat of splumobkeys entirely (I’ve saved a team of players more than one time this way). It’s also worth considering that in public games panflutes are lost often the first thing stolen and sleep wouldn’t even be available to anyone if it weren’t for STS. And these are only tiny examples: STS allows you to use sleep daily, constantly, since the early game, as a survival tool, to timeout any fight that you want and as wasteful as you want. And it is incredibly powerful in itself. And put those green gems to use for something else.

Horticulture abridged: who cares if in the long run wormwood is better farming? As Wickerbottom you can gain all the benefits of lazy farming, just doing it one day every year, then forget about farms: kickstart whatever seed you need, like dragonfruit, plant 2 plots with 5 and 5, water soil, equip onemanband and read book while using it. You get a fruit and one seed on bad seasons and one fruit and 2 seeds on good seasons. Repeat as much as you need: Boom, a couple of stacks of dragonpie then forget about farming until next year. Time used in farms? 1 evening probably, with a really cheap setup that can be made on day 5 without excessive material farming.

Horticulture abridged can also speed up stone fruits if you need filler, poop, and rot, or stones and don’t want to go out of your way to get that.

Birds of the world: Krampii farming early on and faster than Walter’s, morsel farming (With a decent setup I filled 2 chests of gold and a fridge of morsels, before the ruins were cleared by the team, and during those times when everyone was complaining about the lack of gold). Feather farming: After day 100 I had enough feathers to use darts as a main weapon, besides the beefalo.

Extra knowledge: With a little RNG luck I tend to be taming a beefalo cheaply on day like 3-4. Why her? No alchemy for all your needs, just make a science machine on the go once and save a lot of time exploring the map instead of getting alchemy materials. Got out of food for the beefalo on the super early game, because you were doing something else? Grow sticks or juicy berries, and keep on doing whatever instantly instead of going out of your way.

On tentacles: I use this daily. Yes, not only to farm krampii or bee queen, you can read on tentacles as a weapon against hordes of enemies like late game hounds , or hordes of monkeys or warrior pigs or most other overwhelming enemies. Read once, kill the horde (or distract them enough for you to finish them off) then kill the remaining tentacles, if any. They will also keep constantly giving you more spots than the ones used, and tentacle spikes. Goes well with STS. Also as most have said, it’s not clunky to setup, the surface for them to grow without hitting you can be made with sticks in a small circle on the ground, or as little walls as one stack of stones (and that contraption will net you 3 bee queen kills)

TL;DR Wickerbottom is about saving time while you multi-task and not setting up things if you don’t want to.

You can still feed an entire server with birds of the world alone should you chose to (I have! Many times) Horticulture abridged can still feed an entire server, or save you the trouble of farming at all, specially if the server people are lazy or just outright bad at farming. It can also power farm for Warly in like a day of work only. Tentacles and sleepy time stories are amazing fighting tools which I use on a daily basics as her. And I end up with a character that can deal almost as much damage as Wanda, ranged, on a beefalo and that control the tide of any fight with sleep powers or tentacles, and never have to worry or use time in food or materials. Not one person that has played with me using wickerbottom, says that she is bad.

She is FAR from a Wilson that grows potatoes fast… 

[GelatinousCube]

3 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

You can still feed an entire server with birds of the world alone should you chose to (I have! Many times) 

Bird farms are actually pretty crazy. I have the Anenome/Catapult blowdart farm set up in my world and while generating a stupid amount of feathers for my blowdarts it also gives multiple stacks of morsels when I use it. So many that I only use like half for actual food and just turn the rest into rotten eggs for gunpowder.

Wickerbottom is a great character and definitely underrated/underutilised but I am still keen for her rework and to see what other nice new stuff she gets. 

[00petar00]

3 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

1) Sleepytime stories and “panflutes being renewable”

That's assuming you play public servers and get surprised when panflute is wasted, i don't think characters should be balanced around public servers playing with random people when DST was meant to be a team game.

Decent players on a private server and you can use panflute and mandrakes efficiently and never run out, plus as i said you can get more from Klaus if it is a long running world.

These daily uses you mentioned aren't a necessity and can easily be solved without it. While this book could be seen as quite powerful to a new player, someone with experience can pick another character that has higher damage modifier or better utility and solve the problem faster.

3 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Horticulture abridged

The only time i farm is when i plan to swap or have someone play Warly and make spices, RWYS made farming better but i still prefer beeboxes. The book has been made more expensive and split into two, i would have preferred if that didn't happen and Wickerbottom just lost the ability to grow plants in soil turf with the book, there would still be uses like for berries,lichen or stone fruit trees having limitless range was so much better and same can be said for silviculture.

I am not saying that horticulture abridged isn't useful when it comes to soil turf farming but that the nerfs to the book trump the value you got from RWYS. Amassing seeds early on is great for combination farming.

3 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Birds of the world

I don't know why people think that this book is the peak of Wickerbottom power, not saying that you meant that but i see majority or at least the vocal minority put this book with sleepytime stories above everything else she can do for some reason.

Instead of crafting books, why not make a different meat farm that will not require any resource input and bring you meat instead of morsels.

Krampus sack while good, is overrated considering the drop chances and the best option is to just kill Klaus since you can still get other loot.

3 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

On tentacles

The most useful book Wickerbottom has, can be used for dragonfly and bee queen setups most often but you need to be careful when it comes to enraged dragonfly since she can slam the ground and deal aoe damage to tentacles.

It is really easy to rush early bee queen kill without using many resources and you'll still be able to repeat kill on respawn. There are other uses like splumonkey farming and possibly the moon quay monkies too if you can use the book on the dock turf, haven't tried it yet.

The imagination is the limit here, this book has countless uses and even in the future updates people will discover new setups.

 

3 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Not one person that has played with me using wickerbottom, says that she is bad.

Wickerbottom was one of the strongest characters with the most versatility, now that we have gotten so many updates that change how game works and character refreshes/releases, she is in the middle of the cast when it comes to power.

I don't need Wickerbottom to be the strongest character why i mentioned this was because she was that strong at one point even with the changes to the game and nerfs she got, she is still strong enough, so you won't encounter people that would tell you that she is weak.

Why Wickerbottom was my favorite character is her having access to that many books/powers that other characters didn't have at that time. Now a lot of the characters have received many different abilities when they were refreshed or released the most notable ones are Woodie, WX-78 and Wanda.

What i hope for this refresh to accomplish is change/remove "The end is nigh!" other books are fine as they are but they could get some changes like that Wickerbottom mod that allowed you to choose the spot where tentacles spawned.

The most important thing for this refresh is to add more versatility, i would want to see Wickerbottom still be the character with most situational powers/books. This may be asking for too much but i would love to see the number of books doubled in the refresh.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

8 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

These daily uses you mentioned aren't a necessity and can easily be solved without it. While this book could be seen as quite powerful to a new player, someone with experience can pick another character that has higher damage modifier or better utility and solve the problem faster.

the point is that you can use that strategy instead of "picking better char to win in a simplier and easier way"... is a sand box, using the best methods and ignoring the rest is just boring and a non sense

@ShadowDuelist nice tips btw, in the way you described her gameplay looks really funny. I hope klei come with books that can make her richer in terms of daily fun

[HellHeater]

she needs a reading meter

[jtubio88]

SHHHHHHHHHHH 

Now is time for the abuelita rework 

 

 

 

[maxwell_winters]

9 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Everything Wurt does is a hazard to other players. Webber, too. They should probably be your focus if people accidentally wandering into dangerous areas other people set up is such a common occurrence. Their dangerous areas are much bigger, not dangerous to them, and the entirety of their kit instead of only one piece of it that isn't even always used. 

Everything Wurt and Webber do is pretty visible because  those are surface structures. Besides, Wurt areas are marked by marsch turf and Webber's ones by Sticky Webbing. People know they should be careful on those types of ground. 

[DinsdaleP]

16 minutes ago, maxwell_winters said:

Everything Wurt and Webber do is pretty visible because  those are surface structures. Besides, Wurt areas are marked by marsch turf and Webber's ones by Sticky Webbing. People know they should be careful on those types of ground. 

Narrator: they aren't.

[Cloakingsumo198]

I hope she gets a reading animation where she stands still to fill up her new book meter.

Spoiler

Jk. I hope they speed up her book casting as a quality of life since they always felt they took forever to cast. That's why I barely use sts outside of bird farming.

 

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, maxwell_winters said:

Everything Wurt and Webber do is pretty visible because  those are surface structures. Besides, Wurt areas are marked by marsch turf and Webber's ones by Sticky Webbing. People know they should be careful on those types of ground. 

On Tentacles is pretty visible because it's a huge mass of wiggling. Besides, On Tentacles is used in areas with tons of enemies or bosses. People know they should be careful there. 

[ShadowDuelist]

7 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

The most important thing for this refresh is to add more versatility, i would want to see Wickerbottom still be the character with most situational powers/books. This may be asking for too much but i would love to see the number of books doubled in the refresh.

I think she already is very versatile but yeah, what I hope of her refresh is that they add new books so she can manipulate other mechanics of the world that didn’t exist when she was first made.

I don’t mind if they make her cons stronger but what I wouldn’t like is a total rework (like Woodie’s) just because people who don’t know how to use her, complain about it. For Woodie this was necessary , but I think wicker’s refresh should get the Wigfrid threatment instead.

7 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

Krampus sack while good, is overrated considering the drop chances and the best option is to just kill Klaus since you can still get other loot.

 

My Wicker sack farm can get 2 sacks a day… at any point of the year.  The only thing I need is another person to help me kill the birds (they are too many for wicker alone with 2 birds reads + sts). It also gives me tons of small meat, monster meat, charcoal and feathers for darts. I’m not saying I’m replacing Klaus but it’s a pretty good complement. The krampii die automatically to tentacles btw, don’t have to do anything for that.

[Mysterious box]

8 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

These daily uses you mentioned aren't a necessity and can easily be solved without it. While this book could be seen as quite powerful to a new player, someone with experience can pick another character that has higher damage modifier or better utility and solve the problem faster.

In this same token someone with experience can play without relying on character perks they're not a necessity either if something helps it helps doesn't really matter if there's a alternative. 

4 hours ago, maxwell_winters said:

People know they should be careful on those types of ground.

[Primalflower]

On 7/2/2022 at 9:34 PM, shadowtiger123 said:

- wionna legit only use for farms then switch into whatever character they play

Dont really want to engage with anything else, but I wanted to say that this is a bit of a sad take. I feel as if winona is a character  of whom's perception is one of the most effected by this weird mindset that people have that you will at literally all points in gameplay, have the celestial portal open and ready and the purple gems/moonrocks to use it all willy nilly.

I feel like realistically, there are going to be so so many points (IE, all survival pubs, for one) in which the celestial portal isn't a factor, and to utilize winona's incredibly useful machinery, you must play her. In this way, I think she's totally good! I love winona a lot. In the same vein, I feel like people underutilize the spotlight & nitre battery. The spotlight finds a lot of use for me when I'm boating, or when I'm just... generally doing something that doesn't require more than just the one person: IE farming in the night. And the nitre battery is like, the only battery you'll really be using in short-term play, honestly..! In addition addition to that, I think people under utilize the duct tape, in the sense that it is absolutely awesome and convenient for early game boating! It feels really good to not have to care about boat patches & be able to craft them at any waterlogged biome early on, and as the game plays out.

Secondly, I think winona was initially done dirty with how crafting worked before the UI changes. But in the modern day, Her crafting speed bonus is so so much more noticeably with how refining works now, You craft so so so fast!!! especially with things like the alchemy engine or boat stuff. It feels so convenient and nice.

Finally, I think winona is in a perfectly good spot, and I like to play her a lot when im a bit sick of webber. I think even if I don't find the celestial portal to be something that breaks her, its absolutely worth noting that in an awful lot of cases, it isn't even a factor, even though people seem to like to pretend as if it always is. But I wouldn't turn my nose up at giving her a few more buildings, its only in the nature of an industrial character.

[ZeRoboButler]

I did want to put this here for people to see 

as it turns out, wickerbottom's sleepy time stories is actually more effective for keeping things asleep on top of being easier to create, I felt like that was worth noting since there seems to be some odd discussion on the matter of wicker bottom, I remember when I enjoyed playing as wicker myself so I am happy to see her updated. Although yes she is playable, she does need some attention, (as ironically enough her gameplay loop has a hard time keeping most peoples attention, for any length longer than a season or two.) 

 I can see where this is all coming from, I do think that characters like willow or walter probably deserve better, they have some cool mechanics but they could stand to be improved upon. In this case we have something (or someone) that is a bit "outdated", the game has come a long way and it makes sense to help those who have fallen out style so to speak.

Unfortunately we can't do much else aside from let them know how we feel, be patient, and hope for the best... 

[skile]

8 hours ago, Primalflower said:

I feel like people underutilize the spotlight & nitre battery. The spotlight finds a lot of use for me when I'm boating, or when I'm just... generally doing something that doesn't require more than just the one person: IE farming in the night. And the nitre battery is like, the only battery you'll really be using in short-term play, honestly..! 

 

Problem with spotlights is that in most cases, they're just underwhelming. 

even in some situations when you're alone, firepit is usually preferable  for boating it allows you to at least see where are you sailing without having to check the map every 5 seconds(+a firepit takes less space than spotlight and generator, and firepit can warm you up) for gardening it's alright, i suppose. in situations with several players you need not only more fuel, but also more spotlights themselves, and at this point, why not use a firepit?

now, the good thing about spotlight is that no matter how much charge is left, it always has max reach, unlike firepit, but it's still not enough to justify using it in most cases. 

it has some potential, but it'd need some tweaking(higher max range, maybe?) 

[SinancoTheBest]

Alright, J implore you to learn what a Character Refresh means in this context before you start campaigning against it.

Character Refreshes are specific types of regular updates that put a subject character to the centerpiece and ammend how they are played, release a new exclusive skin for the character alongside new belongings, add weavable variants of the character's classic collections (Roseate, Guest of Honor, Survivor, Triumphant) and release an animated story about the backstory of the character.

In 2019 Character Refreshes were announced for all 12 original characters esting at the time and in time, most characters got theirs from this order: Winona, Willow, Warly(was a surprise addition, got ported from Singleplayer with a refresh), Wendy, Woody, Wigfrid, Wes, Webber, Wolfgang and WX78. The only remaining refreshes belong to Wickerbottom, Maxwell and Wilson, probably in that order. It's inevitable  and great, because Wickerbottom could really use some attention both at the gameplay and lore departments.

[Primalflower]

7 hours ago, skile said:

firepit is usually preferable  for boating

the spotlight carries the benefit of being untouchable by wavey jones, meaning if your sanity is high enough you can just ignore them with a spotlight instead of chasing after them, and many boat designs have an issue where a building is too close to the edge and presents spots where wavey jones cannot be killed.

It would benefit from a little increase in the light radius, but i kind of remain firm that this isn't necessary.

[Falkenpelz]

I always liked Wicker and while the farming update was nice itself, it was what brought issues about her character. I really want her to get a rework mainly for the trailer and the lore, because there is so much to her that we never got to know - she too knows how to practice magic after all. I would like to see a rework emphasize her support role for the group (please don't just cram in another meter for her) - since Klei mentioned things to "checkout" in the teaser, it would be kind of funny, if she could lend the books to other survivors, but only for a limited time after which the magic would expire.

[Guihhza]

On 7/3/2022 at 6:05 PM, Szczuku said:

My brother in Christ, we've had 6 new characters since Winona. 7 if you count Wonkey

Sorry, Wanda has gotten into my head

[ShadowDuelist]

23 hours ago, ZeRoboButler said:

I did want to put this here for people to see 

as it turns out, wickerbottom's sleepy time stories is actually more effective for keeping things asleep on top of being easier to create

I think the radius of the book is also larger than the panflute's. I've put things to sleep that were super far away from her, which is something that has never happened to me with a panflute. The panflute however, has a much faster casting time.
 

[Cheggf]

9 hours ago, Falkenpelz said:

I always liked Wicker and while the farming update was nice itself, it was what brought issues about her character.

What issues did it bring? That now Horticulture can be used to both kickstart incredibly powerful farms and immediately grow bunches of those power foods on demand instead of make a thousand worthless berries?

16 hours ago, skile said:

firepit is usually preferable  for boating it allows you to at least see where are you sailing without having to check the map every 5 seconds

I don't know why you'd use a spotlight instead of a deck illuminator, lantern, paper lantern, lightning rod, or light bulb, but the fire pit is definitely not safe to sail at night with. If you're going slow enough where you can react to the things from the fire pit's range you're going slow enough where you can just crash into them and be fine.

16 hours ago, skile said:

and firepit can warm you up

Which isn't strictly a good thing. If it can warm you then it can help in winter or start killing you in autumn and summer. 

[skile]

11 hours ago, Cheggf said:

 

I don't know why you'd use a spotlight instead of a deck illuminator, lantern, paper lantern, lightning rod, or light bulb, but the fire pit is definitely not safe to sail at night with. If you're going slow enough where you can react to the things from the fire pit's range you're going slow enough where you can just crash into them and be fine.

Which isn't strictly a good thing. If it can warm you then it can help in winter or start killing you in autumn and summer. 

well, i'm pretty biased towards fire pits, because i mostly sail in winter or late Autumn