Wickerbottom Rework: New Mechanic Idea

[Kaw_]

Wickerbottom - BETA Tests Feedback

(Tested by players with over 1000+ game hours in realistic scenarios, so even being an early feedback, it wasn’t rushed)

Disclaimer:

Spoiler

 

1. But I still ask that please, these all are opinions from a group of people that wants the game to be fun, but yet balanced, so feel free to share what you think about them.

2. Keep in mind that we don’t mean these adjustments SHOULD be applied as they’re written, they are just “raw” ideas to be improved, they can be adapted to whatever fits better.

Anything can be changed too, tell us what you would change in anything you’ve seen here or if you just agree.

 

What we had in mind thinking about these changes:
Wickerbottom is a hell of a strong character that has a lot of useful resources and mechanics with few penalties compared to how others are penalized for using their perks, since what she does directly affects the whole environment and players, and are not just some boosts to herself.

The access to these tools, currently, are bluntly so easy to handle that makes all the effort to make anything else with other methods just pointless compared to how Wicker can just do stuff “for free”, and for this game, this level of easy doesn’t properly translates to the “Don’t Starve Experience” fun in our opinion, it just makes practically any struggle disappear.

So, with that in mind, those are the changes we thought that could be applied:

The Burnout Meter

Spoiler

 

Our insomniac librarian sure has a sharp brain, but she is still nothing but human (by now…), all this excessive reading with no sleeping must tire the heck out of her brain.

That meter would be a counter that goes 0 to 100 as Wicker keeps reading books. The meter would fill up equivalent to the book’s consumption rate (e.g.: If the book loses 20% durability each reaching, you get 20 “burnout points”. If a book loses around 33% durability each reading, the meter fills up around 33 points). After reaching 100%, Wickerbottom would get a Burnout state, being unable to read until the meter goes down to 0 again.

After 30 seconds without reading any book, the meter would lose 4 points each minute. If not burned out, players can wait to avoid reaching 100% but still be able to read when safe again, but if they reach 100%, Wickerbottom would only be able to read after fully rested, when the Burnout Meter goes 100 to 0.

->Books that stack up 20 points each reading: 
Practical Rain Rituals, Overcoming Arachnophobia, Applied Sirviculture, Horticulture Abriged, The End is Nigh!, Sleepytime Stories, On Tentacles, Lux aeterna Redux.

->Books that stack up around 33 points each reading:
Birds of The world, The Angler's Survival Guide, Tempering Temperatures, Lux Aeterna, (Lunar Grimoire), The Everything Encyclopedia, Horticulture Expanded, Apicultural Notes, Pyrokinetics Explained

In other words, when getting a Burnout, players wouldn’t be able to read for around 3 game days.

Bonus: If Wickerbottom eats her favorite food (Surf’n’Turf), the meter loses 25 points, making players able to read more or reducing the burnout wait time. This effect only applies once each 8 minutes (1 game day).

This would balance the read-spamming that easily occurs, even more renewable now with bookcases. Since that would work as an exclusive mechanic to her, removing the sanity penalty for reading would be desirable.

 

Book Adjustments

Spoiler

 

Shoutout to Klei for making such powerful books, they surely are useful! But at their current state… way too usable… actually, abusable.

Lunar Grimoire: Full Moon isn’t the only useful phase because New Moon still has its single use, but it’s nothing to compare. It has a quite cheap recipe that you can get early on, and by using it you can:

-Infinite Full Moon Cycle: You can make infinite full moons happen in a row (through a bookcase and 3 books, you can switch between them and constantly read to command the moon phase. By the time you reach the third book, the first one is completely full again), and that can happen before first winter!

So, night "danger" is just gone for good.

-Abusing Glommer respawn: You can constantly kill him as much as you want, especially using the method above.

-Moon Stone Event: Abusable through the Infinite Full Moon Cycle, granting a lot of meat, pig skins, hound tooths or even plenty of moonrocks. 

*It doesn’t require that much buildings to make it happen, it’s an example.

-Maxwell Graveyard Werepig Farming: Abusable as well, since you can respawn ghosts as you wish.

These are just to mention a few from this single book… (i’m looking at you, On Tentacles abusers)

So, what can possibly fix it?
Considering that this post is to manage the issue of read-spamming plus adding the Burnout Meter mechanic, the Lunar Grimoire should either:

1. Be completely consumed when read and automatically making Wickerbottom reach the Burnout State (don’t freak out, the recipe is literally free)
2. Lower it to 2 usages, each consuming 50% of its durability and i.e adding 50 burnout points.

Now why that? As said before, the book is easily craftable and now renewable in two ways, either farming moonrocks when reading it to craft new ones or just regenerating the durability with a bookcase. Those changes seem to be nothing more than fair.

Or, as a third option, change the craft recipe to 1 iridescent gem instead of 2 moonrocks, or even use both options together and keep the maximum usages.

Tempering Temperatures: This book is fine actually, it normalizes your temperature depending on the situation, resets wetness and it has an area effect, pretty straight forward, but an interesting suggestion would be giving the temperature a short “immunity time”. Once it changes your current temperature, it instantly starts to change if it’s too cold or too hot. 

After reading, would be nice being immune to getting colder or hotter for around 5-10 seconds.

“Oh my god, wouldn’t that be too broken?!?” -It would, if the Burnout Meter didn’t exist. Its purpose is exactly for that, to avoid spamming and make wise reading decisions, giving Wickerbottom an actual mechanic instead of being a resource giving machine.

The Angler's Survival Guide: That one is pretty ok as well, it serves for its purpose, but another interesting addition would be resetting ponds and lakes fish limit, like the Oasis, granting some extra fishing for the cost of burnout, again.

-

Now, we reach another keypoint: Maxwell. “What’s the point of limiting Wickerbottom if he can just read her stuff as much as he wants?” 

That’s right, so let’s limit him too and wait for his rework so he gets his own new mechanic and leave her be ;p

Since those books and meter mechanic are mainly for making Wickerbottom having her own uniqueness, Maxwell is just an amateur close to her, then what we do is:

-Reduce Maxwell’s reading effectiveness:
Reading WickerB’s books with maxwell would cost twice as much the books durability, or have it’s effectiveness reduced to half. Less birds/tentacles would spawn, other sustaining effects would last less, or even better! Give Maxwell’s reading decent chance to fail and make the book lose durability for nothing. He isn’t using his glasses after all!

 

 

DISCLAIMER AGAIN:

Spoiler

 

1. But I still ask that please, these all are opinions from a group of people that wants the game to be fun, but yet balanced, so feel free to share what you think about them.

2. Keep in mind that we don’t mean these adjustments SHOULD be applied as they’re written, they are just “raw” ideas to be improved, they can be adapted to whatever fits better.

Anything can be changed too, tell us what you would change in anything you’ve seen here or if you just agree.

 

That's it, !

ps: Oh, and also, using Pyrokinetics Explained is causing game crashes.
 

ps.2: The biggest issue is also that she lacks a unique gameplay for her own. All she does is for everyone and never only for her, basically just a resource station.

[Duck986]

27 minutes ago, Toriih said:

-Infinite Full Moon Cycle: You can make infinite full moons happen in a row (through a bookcase and 3 books, you can switch between them and constantly read to command the moon phase. By the time you reach the third book, the first one is completely full again), and that can happen before first winter!

So, night "danger" is just gone for good.

BuT iT's NoT oP!!! It'S jUsT a SiLlY aRgUmEnT!!!

[Ohan]

8 minutes ago, Toriih said:

manage the issue of read-spamming

..why do u think this is an issue though? Its been a core part of wickerbottom since.. forever. Her books need to be “spammed” in order to work.

Can you imagine setting up a tentacle trap with your burn out meter? Stop every 5 casts and stare at the meter while it goes down when an average BQ trap requires ~5 full books? Or worse yet imagine farming feathers/krampus with bird+sleepy books with a meter like this in place.. or literally most other activities done with her books like silviculture/lureplant farming. 

The only “book meter” wickerbottom needs is her sanity. She already interacts with that resource in a unique way compared to the rest of the cast.

You forgot to mention the new downside where if she reads a book at 0 sanity a nightmare will spawn. Nightmares spawned this way dont seem to be limited in number. So it will be much harder to read for free at 0 sanity now. Until u get ur hands on bone helmet like before.

On average she’ll also be using more sanity since there are a lot more books to use, especially books for day-to-day use like temp and lux instead of most of them being for dedicated Isolated farming sessions like before where casting at 0 sanity was a big boon. 

Her HP has been lowered as well and now she only gets hunger from stale/orange food. New downside on top of the nightmare spawning couldve been interesting perhaps but we should know by now not to expect drastic new downsides from refreshes. 

——
i agree the lunar grimoire needs to be adjusted. It should be harder to acquire by perhaps being moved to the celestial tab and the recipe should be more expensive. 

19 minutes ago, Toriih said:

The Angler's Survival Guide: another interesting addition would be resetting ponds and lakes fish limit, like the Oasis

I really like this idea. 

[NoodlemanNed]

24 minutes ago, Toriih said:

Tested by players with over 1000+ game hours

first of all, having a lot of hours doesnt make you more qualified for anything.

Also we really need more time to see how strong the books really are. Adding a random delay timer might just make wicker a lot more annoying to use along with killing off a lot of the old farms she had.

[Kaw_]

16 minutes ago, NoodlemanNed said:

first of all, having a lot of hours doesnt make you more qualified for anything.

Also we really need more time to see how strong the books really are. Adding a random delay timer might just make wicker a lot more annoying to use along with killing off a lot of the old farms she had.

Not about being qualified or better than anyone, just saying there’s at least people who understand about the game, but thanks for participating tho!

16 minutes ago, Ohan said:

why do u think this is an issue though?

As mentioned, the issue is how this spamming for a cheap price makes the game more easy and automatic imo, it kinda spoils a lot of the struggling survival layer despite being interesting. Just an opinion!

16 minutes ago, Ohan said:

Its been a core part of wickerbottom since.. forever

Doesnt necessarily means it was good, but just an opinion too.

As for the rest, thx for the participation

[Copyafriend]

I think the spam casting is a fantastic part, and i think this would just add waiting to a character for the sake of waiting. I understand your intentions, and thats fine, but i disagree. Adding this as you described sounds more Inconvenient than interesting balancing mechanic. I think a potential alternative would be doubling the cost of the book if you dont have enough sanity to cast it. Or maybe making wickerbottom be unable to cast without sufficient sanity. Or making the cast speed slow 6x (slower) if she doesnt have enough sanity

[flamboyant wolf]

i don't think burnout is a good idea. 

it would limit your farming capabilities, as well as making you not want to use books in day to day scenarios. 

all this will do is make Wickerbottom less enjoyable to play.