wickerbottom Wickerbottom refresh thoughts.

[Sapientis]

Apart from Books, changes made to her feel adequate (-25 Health, immunity to sleeping, spawning Nightmare Creatures at low Sanity and not being able to eat spoiled food, though I believe this one should include eating all harmful foods like Monster Meat or Rot while fertilizing, because Wickerbottom should know better).

Onto the Books part
Before refresh each of her 5 (then 6) Books could be categorized based on its purpose:

• amassing resources
  • Birds of The World
  • Applied Horticulture (Horticulture, Abridged, Applied Silviculture)
• spawning powerful mobs
  • On Tentacles
• copying other item's effect (it's a little far-fetched but whatever)
  • Sleepytime Stories (Pan Flute)
  • The End Is Nigh! (Torch I guess(?), especially after WX-78 refresh dropped)

Summing it up she could gather a lot of food and grass/twigs, feathers, Krampus Sacks and easily access a lot of Tentacle Spikes (which is a decent weapon for everyday use) she could also switch on WX-78's godmode.

New Books not only broaden existing categories, but also introduce a new one, which makes her truly stand out compared to a generic Wilson:

• amassing resources
  • Birds of The World
  • Applied Horticulture (Horticulture, Abridged, Applied Silviculture, Horticulture, Expanded)
  • The Angler's Survival Guide
• spawning powerful mobs
  • On Tentacles
  • Apicultural Notes
• copying other item's effect (it's a little far-fetched but whatever)
  • Sleepytime Stories (Pan Flute)
  • The End Is Nigh! (Torch I guess(?), especially after WX-78 refresh dropped)
  • Pyrokinetics Explained (Luxury Fan and Fire Staff combined)
  • Lux Aetherna, Lux Aetherna Redux (Lantern combined with Star/Moon Caller's Staff's ability which allows crops to grow during night or in caves)
• special effect
  • Overcoming Arachnophobia - niche Book with niche use, it can make kiting a little easier, but it's probably not worth lost resources, equipment slot and wasted sanity
  • Tempering Temperatures - to be honest I cannot find a good use for this Book, it might dry all Wetness and all, but why should you use it when there is...
  • Practical Rain Rituals - awesome tool for Spring, Summer, Hermit Quests, and what not, the only thing wrong about this item is the fact that summoning rain should be somehow accessible to every character and Telelocator Staff is a little too expensive method to count
  • Lunar Grimoire - perhaps a little too expensive, but a very useful Book for some fights, farming Werepigs and Moon Stone event
  • The Everything Encyclopedia - the extension to her "knows many things" perk allowing her to yield benefits to other survivors as well as potentially skipping Magic Crafting Stations

All of her perks have been rightfully accentuated and some new one (a couple really powerful) have been introduced. Tentacle Trap for BQ works pretty much unchanged for me (and if used with Bookcase you don't waste used resources), Api Notes are great for many scenarios, from Bosses to everyday fights and all of that on top of great food and basic resources amassing potential.

Wickerbottom has been revisited, she's by no mean bad or lackluster and i feel that if you had a problem with her playing style before the refresh (the point of which is adding/changing something about the character while keeping its core features, which I think has been done with Wickerbottom well) you will still consider her not ideal after the refresh.

Similarly to Wigfrid's refresh it didn't change her main theme but just accentuated some things and added on top of them. Similarly to Wigfrid's refresh there are some Books with little to no uses like Fireproof Falsetto and so be it, there is a lot more good things than bad to wring one's hands over the whole refresh.

[Mysterious box]

On 8/26/2022 at 2:40 PM, Ohan said:

yes u can restore horticulture books but ur also gonna need to grow a lot more sanity food if u dont want to be fighting nightmares constantly. 

I mean or you could use dried kelp builds up very quickly and makes a very nice sanity treat I know people tend to ignore  it for some reason but the sheer quantity really does pay out well but if your not using on tentacles you can also use lunar island or grotto as your book reading locations to ignore sanity woes for specific projects as well for example since you'll be using horticulture for speed farming why not make a farm on the lunar island that way you reap maximum profits for no sanity deposits you can even make it a full moon to max out the sanity regen fissures on the island to have your sanity top off fast as you work so it'll be or close to maxed out when you leave.

On 8/26/2022 at 2:40 PM, Ohan said:

In general books with only 3 uses feel so bad with the addition of the bookcase. cuz its always effectively 2 uses..

This sounds a lot worse than it actually is when you consider there's no limit on the number of bookcases or books you can have so once you craft enough books are effectively always ready and have near infinite uses.

On 8/26/2022 at 2:40 PM, Ohan said:

The other shiny fun toy of the refresh was initially Apiculture but that was eventually nerfed very hard too. Was going from infinite bees to 16 not enough of a nerf? Why was the # of bees per read reduced as well? Please dont say it was in order to neatly match the new cap. Getting 4 flimsy 180 hp followers from each book away from the bookcase at the cost of 66 sanity feels so bad. Not only do u need to carry way too many copies of it on u if u want to replenish bees on foot but u also need a huge amount of sanity food, genuinely how is this different from wolf chugging hunger food?
3 bees per cast felt sooo much better.

Personally I completely understand why the cap nerf happened but I agree with you on the fact they should raise the amount summoned per book read I'd even go as far as to say it should be 4 bees per cast while keeping the 16 cap.

That being said personally I really liked the refresh and Wickerbottom has entered the my list of frequently played characters now.

[Cheggf]

2 hours ago, Sapientis said:

Lux Aetherna, Lux Aetherna Redux (Lantern combined with Star/Moon Caller's Staff's ability which allows crops to grow during night or in caves)

I don't think the moon caller staff grows crops.

[Porkus]

7 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

So I think a confident step in the right direction is to reduce the cost of papyrus to 3 reeds instead of four. I unfortunately clear all of the reeds from the swamp as soon as I encounter it. Not because Im trying to grief Wicker's on pubs, but because as Wormwood I need them to make night armor. 

It would not only be a big buff to Wicker and ease up on reed hoarding, but also be a boon to the console versions with smaller swamps.

NIGHT ARMOR WHY ARE YOU EVIEVKEVSALS K;VLNS; d:l?>smdb

[HowlVoid]

17 minutes ago, Third Porkus said:

NIGHT ARMOR WHY ARE YOU EVIEVKEVSALS K;VLNS; d:l?>smdb

Huh? English?

[Ohan]

6 hours ago, Sapientis said:

Similarly to Wigfrid's refresh it didn't change her main theme but just accentuated some things and added on top of them. Similarly to Wigfrid's refresh there are some Books with little to no uses like Fireproof Falsetto and so be it,

One thing missing in ur comparison is the fact that wigfrid did not get massively nerfed.

The nightmare spawning is a nerf on par with wolf’s mspeed removal except wolf got immensely better at doing constant double damage without needing to eat every 10 seconds and his mightiness got applied to a bunch of labor tasks as well. 

Besides the bookcase, rain rituals and +-grimoire what wicker got was a bunch of silly but fun party tricks that make her guzzle sanity food like no other while simultaneously wasting the hunger part of that sanity food, ultimately being a bigger drain on food resources than old wolfgang lol. 

Wigfrid having 3 useless songs is not a justification for wicker to have useless books.. like what? Neither of them should have parts to their kit that are blatantly useless. 

5 of the 11 new books are straight up too underwhelming to waste sanity on. Those being both lux books, arachno, pyro and tempering. 

The solution to this is very straight forward: halve their sanity cost. And in Redux’s case increase the brightness. 

These 5 books are not worth 33 sanity when u compare what else 33 sanity can achieve for wickerbottom. 

I dont understand why ud go out of ur way to express resistance against making useless aspects of a survivor… not useless. 

[abrocator]

6 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

I mean or you could use dried kelp builds up very quickly and makes a very nice sanity treat I know people tend to ignore  it for some reason but the sheer quantity really does pay out well but if your not using on tentacles you can also use lunar island or grotto as your book reading locations to ignore sanity woes for specific projects as well for example since you'll be using horticulture for speed farming why not make a farm on the lunar island that way you reap maximum profits for no sanity deposits you can even make it a full moon to max out the sanity regen fissures on the island to have your sanity top off fast as you work so it'll be or close to maxed out when you leave.

I mean you could use dried kelp but on the other hand you could also use punctuation marks more than one time per paragraph so that you don’t end up with a 100-word sentence which doesn’t even contain a comma I mean the symbols are right there on the keyboard and plentiful I don’t know why you ignore them.

[Mysterious box]

4 hours ago, abrocator said:

I mean you could use dried kelp but on the other hand you could also use punctuation marks more than one time per paragraph so that you don’t end up with a 100-word sentence which doesn’t even contain a comma I mean the symbols are right there on the keyboard and plentiful I don’t know why you ignore them.

Too busy trying to decipher what this sentence has to do with the Wickerbottom refresh so I'll have to get back to you on that.

[Prinha]

9 hours ago, Ohan said:

One thing missing in ur comparison is the fact that wigfrid did not get massively nerfed.

The nightmare spawning is a nerf on par with wolf’s mspeed removal except wolf got immensely better at doing constant double damage without needing to eat every 10 seconds and his mightiness got applied to a bunch of labor tasks as well. 

I disagree with this. Wickerbottom's books have powerful effects. Originally reading these books had two costs: the ressources for crafting the book and significant sanity per reading.

The ressource cost for mass casts was severly reduced through the introduction of the bookcase.

At the same time, the sanity cost was almost meaningless, because even at 0 sanity not a whole lot was happening. I mean, if reading a book at very low sanity doesn't do anything, then it's not really a price, is it?

In my opinion the counterbalance of Wicker's power in the form of ressources + sanity is just shifted from reed farming to shadow fighting. And I very much like this change. I like that there is a drawback to Wicker's power. I like that her 250 sanity and inability to sleep (which recovers sanity pretty quick) have a meaning. I like that I can deal with the drawback in several ways (sanity foods, fighting the shadows, distracting them with Bernie, Bone Helm, ...).

The other day I wanted to know, if all the complaints on the forums had some substance to them. So I went and setup a tentacle trap at BQ for a Klei hosted public survival world. Since I started in late winter, the run is not comparable to a BQ rush. I did craft only 4 books and used them two times each with help of bookcase There was an intermediate willow player there, who helped me with his/her Bernie after a while. Even though I didn't need that help, it was really cool. It felt good. I can't remember the last time, I was glad, that somebody else logged in as Willow.

Quote

Wigfrid having 3 useless songs is not a justification for wicker to have useless books.. like what? Neither of them should have parts to their kit that are blatantly useless. 

5 of the 11 new books are straight up too underwhelming to waste sanity on. Those being both lux books, arachno, pyro and tempering. 

The solution to this is very straight forward: halve their sanity cost. And in Redux’s case increase the brightness. 

These 5 books are not worth 33 sanity when u compare what else 33 sanity can achieve for wickerbottom. 

I dont understand why ud go out of ur way to express resistance against making useless aspects of a survivor… not useless. 

I do agree with the statement that nobody should have useless tools in their kit. At the same time, I urge us to be careful with the word useless here. Wigfrid's song has been used in a pretty popular Wigfrid run to fight the enraged Dragonfly.

I'm not so sure, that Wicker has any useless books in her arsenal. Some books have pretty weak effects or effects that only very few if any interesting uses have been found for. I wouldn't mind a decrease in sanity cost for those weaker books only. Maybe the ones that can be upgraded to better editions. I strongly disagree with lux, pyro and tempering being useless. I use Lux to speed up farming, I used pyro several times, when I messed up and had fire in my base and I really like temperature book to instantly dry myself.

At the same time, I don't get what all this sanity outrage is about. Sometimes I do like that I can farm nightfuel with Wicker pretty much anytime anywhere. Maybe this is a problem on shared or public worlds, but on my solo world I had no issues with sanity ever since I made my bee zone. Jelly Salad is just so easy to make after the first few springs.

[Hornete]

1 hour ago, Prinha said:

I really like temperature book to instantly dry myself.

I've been liking it a lot combined with insulation too. Lasts a good bit when wearing tier 3(value of 240) insulation plus the fact that it's instantaneous and has 5 uses before running out makes it really fantastic to use. It'll last you for days before you have to get another temperature book, while with thermal stones you'll frequently need to make trips back to the fridge/fire and wait a bit.

[Szczuku]

Boring playstyle before rework, boring playstyle after rework.

Haven't even played her yet but I already know that her "all benefits, barely any downsides" gameplay will get stale very fast

[ArubaroBeefalo]

before she wasnt a character i ever wanted to play and now will be in my pool of fav characters

my problem with her was the lack of books and interesting downsides and that has been mostly solve with the refresh

[Guille6785]

6 hours ago, Prinha said:

At the same time, I urge us to be careful with the word useless here. Wigfrid's song has been used in a pretty popular Wigfrid run to fight the enraged Dragonfly.

except it wasn't

[Prinha]

3 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

except it wasn't

Can't argue with that: I don't know why I misremembered. My apologies.

[Duck986]

maybe im blind, but why nobody mentioned The End is Nigh?

[goblinball]

1 hour ago, Duck986 said:

maybe im blind, but why nobody mentioned The End is Nigh?

Everybody forgot about it 

[HowlVoid]

1 hour ago, goblinball said:

Everybody forgot about it 

More like it gets tiring to keep beating a dead horse. 

[Cheggf]

3 hours ago, Duck986 said:

maybe im blind, but why nobody mentioned The End is Nigh?

Wasn't nerfed or added as something new to be seen as compensation for the nerfs she did receive.

[Yuuko]

On 8/27/2022 at 10:55 PM, Ohan said:

Wigfrid having 3 useless songs is not a justification for wicker to have useless books.. like what? Neither of them should have parts to their kit that are blatantly useless. 

Its 100% okay to have some parts of a character's kit be weak, especially when they have over a dozen pieces!  She could have a book named "literally useless" and it wouldn't drop her from top tier.

I'm not even the one playing Wicker in my world and I'm loving her re-work.  Being able to have full moons, rain on/off, earthquakes, quick crops, etc are all massive boons.  She was already pretty good, and is only better now.

Your gripe mainly comes from the difficulty with spamming books for 1 niche early game thing she could do.  This 1 niche early game thing was hardly her character defining trait.  As others have explained she can still do it too, so nothing is lose.  It is just changed, so learn and adapt.  Her ability to recharge books makes any book-dependent tasks for her much much easier because they can be on repeat without crafting a whole new set of books.  Quit looking at what 10 days of rushing bq trap used to be, and look at her whole game plan now.

PS - lux books are great for causing earth quakes under ground.

and

Quote

The nightmare spawning is a nerf on par with wolf’s mspeed removal except wolf got immensely better at doing constant double damage without needing to eat every 10 seconds and his mightiness got applied to a bunch of labor tasks as well. 

That is a real laugh !!  Wolf's speed removal was a very big deal.  He had a lot of niche things he could do with that speed in addition to the general useful nature of moving faster.  Going from 1.97~ to constant 2x is good, but its not some massive buff.

Spawning nm creatures IF you read a book at no sanity is pretty easy to avoid, just restore your sanity and spread out your casts.  You don't have to cast on tentacles 20 times at once.  You can cast it 4-5 here or there as you do other things and still get the bq trap done...

[Ohan]

6 hours ago, Shosuko said:

I'm not even the one playing Wicker in my world and I'm loving her re-work.

Lol 

6 hours ago, Shosuko said:

This 1 niche early game thing was hardly her character defining trait. 

it was to me? And undoubtably many other wicker mains who actually play the survivor ur talking about. BQ is one of the best bosses in the game, having an effective way to kill her is not a niche thing.

6 hours ago, Shosuko said:

As others have explained she can still do it too, so nothing is lose.  It is just changed, so learn and adapt. 

I dont need random forumites to explain anything about wickerbottom to me. I have somewhere between 1.5k and 1.8k hours on the character. I know trapping bq still works ive already posted and described two rushes. Day 10 and 14. 

Post refresh silviculture can no longer be used to advance evergreens to dead stage to quickly spawn treeguards. Im pretty sure im the only person who has brought this up on the forums and @ShadowDuelist is the only other person who understood what that nerf meant lol. 

thats how little in need i am of random forumites explaining aspects of wickerbottom to me. The only detail ive learned about wicker from the forums since forever was when lakhnish pointed out during the beta that hort has always worked on mush planters, and thats because i cant even remember the last time i crafted one on any character lol. 

Like most of my forum threads this one was addressed to any devs who are potentially looking for feedback and nobody else. Definitely not to anyone who has less experience both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking than me on the subject. 

[Starlogy]

18 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Boring playstyle before rework, boring playstyle after rework.

Haven't even played her yet but I already know that her "all benefits, barely any downsides" gameplay will get stale very fast

My brother in christ did you even read her changes?

[00petar00]

I have been very busy and haven't gotten the time to play much so i may not know all the details but here's what i think.

 Bee Queen isn't a niche part of Wickerbottom's strengths. Killing BQ so early in the game and having access to bundling wrap without much investment is so good.

I understand why there was a change to spamming books with 0 sanity but i still don't like how it currently is.

While it is okay to have parts of character that don't have too much use or are considered weak, there's no need to make them completely useless unless you want to make it harder on yourself as it kind of defeats the purpose of giving her a book/ability if it isn't worth using. There is nothing wrong with tweaking sanity drain for each book based on how strong it is.

Honestly, the only way i see myself going back to Wickerbottom or playing any character that doesn't have access to cheap teleportation is if i use mods that allow me to teleport alone. It is quite disappointing that we still don't have cheap teleportation for the rest of the cast.

[Cr4zyFl4mes]

12 hours ago, Duck986 said:

maybe im blind, but why nobody mentioned The End is Nigh?

Mike mentioned it.

11 hours ago, goblinball said:

Everybody forgot about it 

Yes please, I'm glad it's so obscure. Makes my strategies stand out.

 

5 hours ago, Ohan said:

@ShadowDuelist is the only other person who understood what that nerf meant lol

I doubt it. It is pretty straight forward nerf, easy to understand the concept of.

 

5 hours ago, Ohan said:

I know trapping bq still works ive already posted and described two rushes. Day 10 and 14. 

Sounded like you were complaining mainly about this thing. So what's the main point of your feedback then? That there's a general lack of reeds for everyone in early game?

 

5 hours ago, Ohan said:

Like most of my forum threads this one was addressed to any devs who are potentially looking for feedback and nobody else. Definitely not to anyone who has less experience both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking than me on the subject. 

Don't use the General Discussion forums then and use the Suggestions and Feedback. I think it is much likely to be seen by developers there, while much less likely to get opinions from other forumites.

[Yuuko]

Quote

Like most of my forum threads this one was addressed to any devs who are potentially looking for feedback and nobody else. Definitely not to anyone who has less experience both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking than me on the subject. 

I have somewhere between 1.5k and 1.8k hours on the character.  thats how little in need i am of random forumites explaining aspects of wickerbottom to me.

When Wolfgang got his initial rework there was a lot of buzz about it both for and against the changes that were made.  There were perspectives from wolfgang mains as well as people who picked up wolfgang *only* since the rework.  Having all of these perspectives was important as it helped generate a real dialogue looking more honestly at whether the changes were good or not.  If there was not much conversation I doubt the devs would have made a second pass - and if they didn't have so much input, I doubt they would have really been able to nail down a solid way forward for him.

If you want any change for wicker, you should want all feedback.  Whether someone has played wicker for 2000000000000 hours or only 2, whether they played since DS beta dropped or picker her up just now.  This devs have no reason to balance the game on the opinion of 1 or 2 "qualified forumites."  If you want to swing your big ego around go ahead but its not likely to gain you any traction with the players, and if it doesn't gain traction with the players - why would the Devs put any stock in it?

Quote

I know trapping bq still works ive already posted and described two rushes. Day 10 and 14. 

So there is no problem?  Great.  Moving on then...

[Mysterious box]

12 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

 Bee Queen isn't a niche part of Wickerbottom's strengths. Killing BQ so early in the game and having access to bundling wrap without much investment is so good.

Kinda bad game design though and by that I mean something so great shouldn't be so easy.

 

12 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

While it is okay to have parts of character that don't have too much use or are considered weak, there's no need to make them completely useless unless you want to make it harder on yourself as it kind of defeats the purpose of giving her a book/ability if it isn't worth using. There is nothing wrong with tweaking sanity drain for each book based on how strong it is.

This is true but I haven't seen a book that has no use cases sure some are more niche than others but they all have a proper use.

12 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

I understand why there was a change to spamming books with 0 sanity but i still don't like how it currently is.

I mean she has various work arounds to her sanity and her library of books will eventually reach a point where she doesn't need to wait on recharge downtime for her books she lost instant gratification for overall staying power and I atleast see that as a good tradeoff.