Willow Refresh 2.0 ideas!

[Atkvin]

It's getting late here so I won't add too much flavor text, but in short I've been fascinated by the dilemma of how to improve Willow when her entire archetype is based around an element as destructive and undesirable as fire.

I've thought of some nice little ideas to lean her more into more positive uses of fire and giving her more control/use out of fire, but I'd love to know what you think.

• Willow's Lighter now only sets plants and structures smoldering, and starts a controlled fire that will never spread
• Willow's Lighter can also be used to warm up thermal stones by one stage, instantly dry wet objects - or dry meats in the inventory over a 8s/20s duration depending on the cut of meat!

The first one is a weird one I know, especially given Willow is a pyromaniac. But it is meant to ground its sister mechanic of controlled fires in a bit more reality, and dispel Willow's lingering reputation of being a griefer just starting in a world - which torches craftable by any character would be decisively superior for - and free her to be able to start fires without unintentionally burning farther than she can control!

Giving the lighter the ability to warm thermal stones is meant to offset the effect of this change on her survival in winter - and drying wet items and drying meats was just a positive use of fire I thought would be great to add on (especially since it gets massively outclassed as a light source by Lanterns so quickly it's not even worth trying to compete)

• Willow now absorbs some damage from exterior hits into losing a small bit of heat
• Willow's freezing point increases the less sanity she currently has, making her even more prone to freezing
• Willow now gains speed when in proximity of plants or structures on fire, or is on fire herself

I enjoy circular/interacting pieces of design, and felt this would be a cool way to encourage Willow to play a little more differently in combat than other characters by balancing her temperature as an additional meter, rather than simply make her freeze more easily and punished more when freezing.

Now, the longer the battle drags on and the more sanity she loses, the more likely Willow may freeze if she is hit too many times. But if she has a roaring campfire handy, she speeds up and counters that by making herself warmer, simultaneously making her more agile and allowing her to kite attacks more aggressively/easily.

New craft: Urn (20 ash, 2 red gems, 2 thulecite) - structure

• Any item that would normally burn up from a burning mob/player are siphoned into an Urn in screen-radius proximity for safekeeping upon the mob's death
• The Urn also spawns and stores souls from nearby dying mobs similar to the presence of a Wortox.
• Urns only have 2 inventory slots, meaning they will only hold up to 1 stack of salvaged loot in addition to 1 stack of 20 souls, assuming its second slot was not already filled with souls. Once full, it will no longer salvage any burnt loot, and any excess generated souls hover shortly before dissipating and healing players nearby
• Urns cannot be accessed freely. They can be destroyed by bosses, hammered, or deconstructed to release their contents, at cost to its materials/requiring a deconstruction staff. However, a player ghost is also able to access the inventory of an Urn by haunting it, and will drop the items out of the inventory the moment they select them

I thought long, long and hard for a more powerful utility that Willow could unlock similar to abilities the more recent characters and reworks have been receiving. It was tough coming up with anything that was related to fire, but I finally settled on allowing her to make urns that would 1) allow Willow to enable fire combat with setup and 2) grant her access to generate/store farmed souls like Wortox, but in a static location instead!

The recipe itself would encourage Willow to burn things often to farm the ash in order to craft plenty to distribute between boss arenas and mob ovens, and the Urn would enable fire to be used more freely in combat without breaking combat entirely thanks to its inventory limitations. Even if players didn't want to chance using fire and had enough combat-proficient characters, they could still benefit from having healing souls they could farm and release in a pinch if there isn't a Wortox handy.

Also, I really liked the idea of these structures giving ghosts of fallen players something to contribute to the battle even if they'd messed up and died! They could play healer by dropping stored souls from the urns, or clear undesired loot from the single inventory slot to make room if the team were trying to get a specific boss loot from using fire.

[-Variant]

It's that time of the month again when Willow's second refresh comes cropping up again.
I think this is something I can get behind, ahah!

Bit aside, I really do hope she gets more love in a touch-up update like some of the others have lately.

[dzzydzzy]

I think that your ideas, though thematically proper, still lack the element that make other survivor's feel rewarding- the progression. Your urn pitch is the closest thing to a progression line. 

In terms of other fire-oriented structures that Willow could have are:

You're absolutely correct about her lighter being outclassed by lantern early on- what if Willow has a unique upgrade light source that rivals the lantern a Kerosene lantern?- behaves in the same way but maybe acts as a weak heat source/ cooking source in addition to same light radius and runs on same timer as lantern, and is refuelable with slime. 

a refuelable Lamp Post of some sort- maybe lamp posts could all be hooked up to a singular source refuel it, creating a light grid. The more light posts you have to a system, the heavier draw  it has on a fuel- making charcoal a much greater needed resource. The perk of this would be being able to go to one location to light up a larger spread area by distributing your lamp posts out over ground. 

This is a witch-y idea but what if Willow was able to make a Brazier unlocked with tier 2 magic and had multiple utilities depending on what fuel is burned. If the user throws in nmfuel, the light radius wards off nightmares. burning a living log will revive a player who haunts the brazier, and any other ideas someone might have (I'm fresh out)

Beacon- Willow could have a diet version of a hostile flare. A light source that lures in all loaded in mobs. Could have great potential for cleaner/streamlined resource farms.

 

Also I ask others, does the Bernie-side of Willow want more love/ attention or is it in a good spot as is?  The only thing I can think of is maybe Bernie buffers that use things like mismatched buttons to increase resistance or increase damage. Maybe something to enrage Bernie to give him AOE. Oops that's just reskinned Abi.

 

[Atkvin]

23 hours ago, dzzydzzy said:

I think that your ideas, though thematically proper, still lack the element that make other survivor's feel rewarding- the progression. Your urn pitch is the closest thing to a progression line. 

I think Willow doesn't need a bunch of new items to craft when there's room to expand in her kit yet. Also, your light grid idea would also fit Winona way better than Willow, I'm afraid.

 

That said, here's my go at adding more unique uses to her lighter to augment its abilities:

Lighter can now be refueled by different types of fuel. Each time a different type is used, it resets the lighter's durability to zero to then begin refueling it with that new fuel type with its respective functions - encouraging using resource farms to maintain its functions depending on the type.

• Flower petals - returns lighter to normal function, refuels by a ton per so it's very easy to return it to normal function without farming butterflies
• Nitre - causes lighter to emit an endothermic fire, burning plants and structures into ice. Can be used to chill thermal stones, and also chills any perishable item so its spoilage slows to the rate of an icebox until it defrosts and unchills over time (similar to a thermal stone)
• Nightmare fuel - causes lighter to emit a shadow fire that lowers sanity over time, and pacifies nm creatures towards the user while lit. Becomes brighter the less sanity its user has. Creates fires that reduce sanity, and do not produce heat nor destroy the object set on fire. Rots perishable items cooked with it, and 'cooks' meat into monster meat, and petals into evil petals.
• Lune tree blossom - causes lighter to create a sanity aura and pacifies Gestalts toward the user while lit. Becomes brighter the more sanity its user has. Creates fires that raise sanity, but do not produce heat nor destroy the object set on fire. Mutates foods and plants - grass tufts lit by it will turn into grass gekkos, and carrots and lightbulbs into Carrats and Bulbous Lightbugs. 'Cooks' mushrooms into moonshrooms, and purifies monster meat into meat, evil petals to petals.

[dzzydzzy]

6 hours ago, Atkvin said:

That said, here's my go at adding more unique uses to her lighter to augment its abilities:L

Lighter can now be refueled by different types of fuel. Each time a different is used, it resets the lighter's durability to zero to then begin refueling it with that new fuel type with its respective functions - likely requiring resource farms to maintain its functions depending on the type.

Brilliant! I love your ideas here and it does fit into the idea of progression and guides her through a certain playstyle. I still do wish that she had a way of upgrading the light radius, as the current one does not incentivize soul reliance on it.