New Character Brainstorm: Wampirela.

[goatt]

Link to Original inspiration

I spend too much time writing it. So I'd like more people to read it. I don't think it'll be implemented but it's fun regardless.

 

-----------------------------------------------

Wampirela has a vampire father and a human mother.

(The original name is Vampirela created by the original post, changed to Wampirela cuz of @Dragonboooorn's comments)

 

The character should have good balance compared to the base game. It also promotes certain type of play style, namely, like bats.

summary

 

 

Sunlight:

Spoiler

- Wampirela gets sanity and hp drain during the day. HP and sanity drain is 1 per 10 second (or about 24 to 40 a day). HP drain can be reduced by wearing any gears with water resistence (because water resistence = sun proof). The reduced amount = water resistence x3. So hats with 20% water resistence provides 60% reduction in hp drain. The final will be 0.4 hp per 10 second. (another character with poison mech)

- cave has no "day" time

- knobbly tree provides 100% protection from HP drain because it has 35% water resistence, or 105% HP penalty reduction. Regular trees also gives some protection.

- She gets half sanity drain during the dusk and 0 HP drain.

- Her sanity drain can be reduced by wearable to the same extent of HP drain reduction.

- She get no sanity drain during the night (opposite to regular characters).

 

Killing and bloodline:

Spoiler

- Wampirela's bloodline evolves after sucking blood from mobs and bosses. Bloodlines will last until death.

- Her max HP and attack damage will increase with bloodlines. If a last hit is landed successfully, max HP increase percentage is (boss hp / 1000). So deerclops gives 4% max hp increase. dragonfly 27.5%, misery toad 99.9%. (182 max hp after clops, 223 after dfly, 350 after misery toad)

- Her attack damadage increase = (Boss regular attack / 10). So deerclops gives 7.5 extra damage, level 3 shadow rook gives 16.5. This number is a constant added to any weapon or no weapon. It includes fist, axe and walking cane. For the context, wigfrid holding dark sword gets 17 extra damage.

- Her HP and attack buff is 1/3 if she kill a boss but couldn't get the last hit. But she gets no bloodline when she couldn't last hit a mob.

- Pigs (0.25% hp increase, 3 damage increase), spiders (0.1% hp, 2 damage), biggest treeguards (3.7% hp, 6 damage). She can only keep the strongest bloodline. She can't keep multiple bloodlines.

- Killing animal mobs that have blood heals her, excluding insects, shadow creatures, clockworks.

- Last hitting mobs gives her mob HP/50 heals. Thus, bats heal 1hp, spiders heal 2 hp, in addition to bloodline evolution.

- Last hitting bosses and mini bosses heals her boss HP/100. Thus, deerclops heals 40, in addition to bloodline evolution.

- Killing innocent mobs gives her extra 50% innocence penalty, but also gives same amount of sanity (it's not under her control but it satisfies her darkest inner thirst).

- Max sanity and max hunger also gets buffed to the same extent as max HP.

 

Blood thirst:

Spoiler

- Wampirela requires blood intake to stay sane and healthy. This can be done by last hitting mobs with blood, or eating any kind of raw meat including fish, or drinking other players' blood.

- she can craft a syringe that allow other players to donate blood willingly, the animation of which is similar to wormwood producing living logs. The syringe is for one time use, for sanitation. It draws 20 health from other players, and heals her with 10 hp, 10 sanity and 10 hunger, yum. syringe can stack up to 20. But syringe blood rot in 10 days. Can be stored in icebox. Other players drinking it will get 10 hp, -20 sanity and 10 hunger. It requires 1 reed and 1 mosquito sack to craft.

- (Yes, other players can drink their own blood in starvation or for fun).

- she gets weaker 1 days after no blood intake. She will take 5% more damage each day in this state, max 100% (but she'll be mostly fine if she has powerful bloodline). This extra damage doesn't cost extra armor, it's calculated after armor reduction. So no extra cost to armors.

- Extra damage doesn't apply to heat, freezing or starvation damage.

- In her weakest state, her max hp is equivalent to Maxwell in battle. (Still stronger than wes).

- her face will look more and more like vampire when she's weak. progression similar to wormwood. But it can be stopped and reset by killing any mobs with blood (excluding lightbugs, bees, butterflies, etc).

- blood thirst is an invisible meter just like the invisible wormwoods' bloom meter.

 

Moon phase:

Spoiler

- Wampirela draws power from the moon. At full moon, she gets 10% speed boost during night. At new moon, she gets 0. The days inbetween she gets extra 1-9%.

- Full moons gives her 1 hp sanity/sec at night, new moon gives 0.

- cave doesn't have moon phase.

 

Night vision:

Spoiler

- She can see things at night in a small radius just like moggle vision. (radius increases when bloodline evolves.) No sanity drain for staying in darkness.

- She still gets hit by Charlie because her night vision is ultrasonic sound wave based, not light wave. So she still needs a torch. But she can do all the actions in pure darkness because of vision, like build a campfire in complete darkness, or pick up a lantern.

- She can see farther at night with light because of her night vision.

 

Food:

Spoiler

- In healthy state, she gets normal food effects.

- In blood thirst state, she gets half effects from cooked food (crockpot food and jerkies). This can be cured by killing for blood or eating raw meat or drinking your friends blood.

- raw non-monster meat gives 0 sanity penalty. It doesn't give sanity benefits because it's just meat, not blood.

 

Bats:

Spoiler

- she can befriend up to 3 bats by walking up to them.

- she can craft a batmerang (bat boomerang) using 2 bat wings and 1 silk. The weapon has 10 uses and has 37.5 damage. Mobs killed by batmerang will be twice as likely to drop the meat loot. For example, birds (50% feather, 50% morsel) will 100% drop morsel. Bats (15% poop, 25% wings, 10% monster meat) will have 50% chance to drop wings, 20% chance to drop mon meat, and 15% to drop poop.

- batmerang rots similar to hambat. (Bat bats don't rot cuz of purple gem dark magic).

- she doesn't lose sanity using bat bats.

 

Sleep:

Spoiler

- she can only sleep 10 sec max at night at a time.

 

Flight:

Spoiler

- She can fly for 2 seconds, ignoring walls, river and cave abyss. Flight speed is same as bats' walking speed, 6. She can fly for 3 seconds during nights. Flight will be interrupted once attacked.

- She fly faster during night in different moon phases.

- The action control is similar to wortox's soul hop. She can change directions during the flight. A countdown timer clock will show above her head.

- Flight has 10 seconds cool done.

- If somehow she ends up in river when she has to land, she drowns.

- If she end up in abyss, this is free void walking. Don't thank me. But I think void walking should be fixed as a bug.

 

 

I would love a leveling system for killing trophies, but I don't think Klei will ever implement one. So to reconcile with their philosophy, I turned to bloodline.

Edited February 21, 2023 by goatt

[Well-met]

could be fun for a mod.

Not the base game though, ever

[Dragonboooorn]

Youve already lost my intrest when gave this character a name without W being first letter

[goatt]

3 minutes ago, Dragonboooorn said:

Youve already lost my intrest when gave this character a name without W being first letter

fixed it. thanks.

[GenomeSquirrel]

Too much like Wigfrid.

To make a vampire, I’d give them a coffin to start with, that would work like Walter’s tents except with Lucy pick up prevention. The coffin gives day protection, without it vampires take Charlie type damage over time and are blinded by bright light. But vampires are fine at dusk and have perfect vision at night.

Their focus will be entering Rabbit and Pig houses while the respective mob is sleeping, this will be their only way to restore hunger, and entering too early will cause the mob to attack and the house unenterable for a day. Houses also grant day protection.

After their house would gain a corrupted tag and the house temporarily spawns Halmets Vampire bats as a befriended mob with their skin? drops retained to make house crafting a bit easier.

Character would have monster tag as would minions. And the challenge would be balancing corrupted houses against the need to maintain normal ones to feed from. I’d imagine they’d need a whistle to control minions.

[goatt]

15 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Too much like Wigfrid.

The main thing about Wampire is that she's weak during the day and she best live in cave. She can't roam freely like Wigfrid.

Wampire can also eat veggie dishes. She has a different way to manage sanity. She needs to eat raw meat to keep her body strong from weak. And she's not tanky as wigfrid.

I'm not sure why you say they are similar. I'd say she's also similar to wanda because Wanda's healthy (age) going down constantly. But not enough similarity to be "too much like Wigfrid". What's your reason?

 

15 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

give them a coffin

This sounds fun. Maybe also allow her to sleep under tombstone.

 

16 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

corrupted tag and the house temporarily spawns Halmets Vampire bats

This also sounds great. Could be a bat spawning structure.

[Mikrell]

Funny how I see this thread while re-watching Castlevania again. I'll take that as a sign to indulge. 

You mentioned that this character should have a character should have good balance comparable to that of base game characters, but her perks seem all over the place. 

 

Base game characters are mostly defined by a singular role that they're good at and are played as such. (Wendy is amazing at mobbing, Wigfrid at fighting, Maxwell at resource gathering etc) This doesn't mean that these characters should only do those tasks but those tasks are where you feel their fantasy, which in turn, feels good. Some characters even have similar playstyles to another but with differences between them. Wolfgang is a more powerful but more selfish fighter compared to Wigfrid. In contrast, Wigfrid offers more team-wide combat support both in and out of combat. Wurt and Webber are minionmancers but Webber has less resource requirements in-comparison to Wurt who has way better late game. Having similarities from another character is not bad but she should have her own identity that differentiate her from the rest of the cast.

 

Wampirela has: infinite scaling that boosts her combat capabilities, some very minor minionmancy with bats, map traversal with flight, and night vision. While those perks are "bat-like" by nature and fit her fantasy design-wise, in terms of playstyle, she feels all over the place. I'd pin down a focus on one of her perks and make the others very minor or outright remove them to cement a playstyle on her akin to base characters. From there, we can answer: What fantasy should this character fill? What part of being a bat makes this character more congruent to her design philosophy? Does she have perks and support a playstyle that feel both inline with her design fantasy?  How does she function in comparison to other characters? 

 

Sunlight:

• Opinion: A downside designed to limit her roaming as you mentioned but is incredibly easy to fix. A pretty parasol pretty much invalidates this weakness and the character can roam freely during the day now. 
• Suggestion: Use summer insulation instead of wet resistance from items since that makes more sense. Some items should be useless for her like Ice Blocks since the purpose of using summer insulation items should be to shield her from the sun instead of keeping her cool. To make things interesting, inverse the deadliness of night to day for her then make sunlight deal instances of Charlie-levels of damage to her instead of a drain. And instead of needing a light source, she needs shade instead. She needs trees or certain levels of total summer insulation (Pretty Parasol + Straw Hat) to prevent taking damage. This is so she can still explore relatively safely but doing tasks during the day while not having the safe amount of shade(summer insulation) should be risky for her. Sanity should still drain during the day.

 

Bloodlines:

• Opinion: The most interesting perk she has. However, I'm inclined to agree with Genome Squirrel. This is just old WX + Wigfried passive. Wigfrid hits and kills stuff to reap the benefits of her valhalla/valkyrie fantasy. Wampirella needs to kill stuff to reap the benefits of her vampirism. Also, the way this is worded is confusing. Does she scale infinitely when killing bosses but can only keep one bloodline when killing mobs? Does killing one boss grant her a bloodline that does not stack  from another boss bloodline? If that's the case, then this disincentivize hunting different mobs if you already posses a better bloodline. Flat base stat changes are also "meh" to me.
• Suggestion: I have two suggestion for bloodlines. One is to either have blood packs drop when Wampirela deal the killing blow to a mob/boss so I can pick and choose what bloodlines buff I want. The other is to completely remove the battle aspect of bloodlines and instead, use a "blood bank" idea that I'll go more in-depth in the Bloodthirst section.

 

Bloodthirst:

• Opinion: A downside meant to just push her to activate her bloodlines perk. Pretty ignorable if you're fighting stuff which bloodlines already encourages but with how bloodlines is worded, she seems to be in an odd spot of not wanting to fight a weaker mob if I have a stronger bloodline active. 
• Suggestion: As mentioned from the bloodlines section, another idea I had is to completely remove the battle-aspect of that perk but instead double down on the syringe/blood-sucking aspect of the perk. How? By drawing/sucking blood from mobs/bosses that are sleeping. You can also store sucked up blood into packs. Because of this, you can now pick and choose which bloodline you gain benefits from, you're no longer required to hunt every day for blood or suck up blood from raw meat, and this feels more inline with her vampire bat fantasy. Blood can only be taken from mobs once every day while bosses can be drawn from at least 3 times, more depending on their max HP. I'd also make it so that bloodline effects have a duration instead of lasting till death. To compensate, I'd also change the benefits reaped from bloodlines from flat base stat/damage increases to something like drinking spider blood grants you immunity to spider webs or drinking Deerclops blood literally turning your blood cold and have your attacks having freezing effects. This idea is more akin to WX than Wigfrid but the differences can be played around with more via the benefits and the character fantasy. 

 

Moon Phase: 

• Opinion: An overall "eh" perk for me. It really doesn't do much other make you a tiny bit faster depending on the moon phase.
• Suggestion: It's pretty low impact. This perk can either stay or go but I'm more inclined to just remove this perk. 

 

Night Vision:

• Opinion: I've never liked Night Vision mechanics. They infantilize the night phases and they're not difficult to handle already. Wampirela, however, can be an exception if we do the suggestion in the Sunlight section! 
• Suggestion: If we're going to the suggestion in the Sunlight perk, I'd make it so her Night Vision grants her full immunity to Charlie and be more akin to Moggles. We're supposed to be a vampire bat that draws blood from our prey at night. Having the night dangerous to Wampirela feels antithetical to her design.

 

Food:

• Opinion: Another "eh" downside. As it currently stands, I'm already pushed to hunt already to activate bloodlines/suck blood. This perk ironically discourages sourcing veggies early on which pushes her to Wigfrid's playstyle of going on constant hunts and having a small veggie source just for more crockpot options (Pierogies).
• Suggestion: Just remove this. We're already hunting for blood to prevent bloodthirstiness anyway. This downside just feels like a downside+ for bloodthirstiness. 

 

Bats:

• Opinion: This just adds another mechanic to her that feels "eh" overall. Bats are weak on their own, having 3 of them does nothing. The other ideas are fine (with some tweaks to the Batmerang below).
• Suggestion: Make bats neutral to her instead. Make the Batmerang drain blood at range instead of the loot drop multiplier. I'd also make the Batmerang finite uses instead of duration-based (I dunno why you said it had 10 uses but lasts for as long as a Ham Bat) Bat Bat changes are fine, makes them a good healing option for her.

 

Sleep:

• Opinion: Irrelevant downside. We're supposed to be running around during the night and have our resting period during the day (like bats do) 
• Suggestion: Remove it. Especially if we're going to do the suggestions I added in the Sunlight section.

 

Flight:

• Opinion: A decent perk that unfortunately clutters her playstyle. It supports her vampire bat fantasy but adds too much to her design-wise. Could be something that we can add later on her but as it stands, her design feels all over the place with additional map-traversal mechanics. 
• Suggestion: Just remove the perk for now. This can be explored further as an add-on from Blood mechanics later on if the feel for this perk seems warranted (outright desirable).

Edited February 23, 2023 by Mikrell

[goatt]

@Mikrell Those are really good ideas, and they've given me some inspiration and made me to reflect on my original intention.

 

In current game, we have characters who have the ability to

Spoiler

- summon puppets

- transform

- hit harder

- range weapon

- cook better

- befriend monsters

- teleport

- engineer

- read magic

- farm better

- fights better

- install add-ons

- have magic followers

 

So I thought, what would be a new ability that no other characters have gotten already.

 

That's when I thought of "kill trophies". Bloodlines are essentially just kill trophies. My original idea was that Wampirela can be buffed by the strongest foe she's ever defeated. From reading your great ideas, I realize that I should just focus more on expanding the main ideas rather than make her have different things all over the place.

 

So let me present my improved ideas.

 

The main ideas

Spoiler

1. main downside: sunburns

2. main perk: bloodline

3. secondary perk: bat / batform

4. secondary feature: blood meter.

 

Feature summary

Spoiler

- Upon entering a new game, she's safe from sunburn for as long as she doesn't kill animals.

- She can switch on and off her vampire gene.

- Cave life and night life is great for her.

- She makes enemies bleed.

- When her vampire genes are highly active, she can fight and travel as a bat.

- killing makes her stronger.

- killing streak makes her stronger.

 

Blood meter

Spoiler

A blood meter (like Wolfgang's muscle meter) measures the activeness of her vampire power. The meter ranges from -5 to 10. In the beginning, new players have 0. It decays at 1 per day.

- eating small raw meats of any kind adds 1 blood and. eating 1 big meat adds 2 blood. Last hitting a mob adds 1 blood. Each 1 blood increase gives her 5 sanity and 2 hp. Raw meats still hurt her sanity and it's calculated separately.

- When the blood meter is positive, she has her vampire superpowers and downsides. Otherwise, her vampire genes are dormant and she appears to be a regular human.

- She can craft a syringe to get blood from other players. Eating blood donation costs other players 20 health, heals Wampirela 2 blood, 10 hunger. Non-vampire players intaking blood donation will get 10 hunger and -20 sanity. She can drink her own blood. (Will other players gain her power if they drink her blood?)

- In her blood thirst state, she's like Wes, and has a 75% damage modifier, and 125% hunger drain.

 

Sunburn

Spoiler

You made a perfect point that parasol can easily solve the problem. I hope to make the problem persistent and hard to manage. I thought about insulation but I don't think it makes sense. Insulation regulates temperature. Thermal stones, ice hats, whirly fans, luxury fans, and blue amulets can regulate temperature. I believe sunproof items should be able to shield what comes from above. Rain comes from above, so rain items are sun items. I believe this is also true in real life.

- In the blood thirst state, she doesn't receive damage from sunburn.

- When her blood meter is positive, she loses 1 hp every 10 seconds. Gears' wetness resistance value can provide the same amount of sun protection. So umbrella provides 90% protection, trees 20%, helmets 20%, eyebrella 100%, etc. The only exception is the Knowbly tree, which provides 100% sun protection.

- Sanity is hurt at the same rate as hp.

- Dusk has no hp drain, but has a normal sanity drain like other characters. She has no sanity drain at night.

 

Bloodline (killing trophy)

Spoiler

- Every time she kills a new mob (or body fluid?), she will absorb their blood and become stronger.

- When her blood meter is positive, each of her melee attacks bleeds the enemy for 2 seconds, similar to fire damage, but mobs won't panic. The bleeding damage per second equals blood meter. Max bleeding time is 20 seconds. Each tick of bleeding damage also stuns the enemy if they are stunnable.

- Each new boss killed by her (10,000 hp or less) adds 1 bleeding damage per second. Each new boss (10,001 hp or more) adds 1.5 bleeding damage. Each new mini-boss adds 0.5 damage per second to bleeding damage. Each new regular mob adds 0.1 damage per second. (In total, max bleeding damage will be 20 ish damage per second, even though I think the number should be tuned to higher).

- Each blood sample of a new boss adds 10 max hp, 10 max hunger, and 10 max sanity.

- Bloodline effects last forever. Each time Wampirela dies, she will lose 3 random blood samples in the mob and mini-boss section. If she has no mob or mini-boss blood left, she will lose 1 seasonal boss blood. If no seasonal boss, then random raid boss.

- bloodline effects are disabled when the blood meter is non-positive.

- she can right-click papyrus which triggers an animation that she cut her skin and let her blood stain on the papyrus (similar to wormwood chopping herself), and then she sniffs papyrus (by right click) and a window like "cookbook" that will show what mobs she has killed. The stained papyrus doesn't stack and will remain like that until destroyed. She can of course stiff it to get the viewing window again. The cutting action costs her 1 hp. Other non-vampire players can't detect that information. But Wampirela will broadcast her trophies in pride.

 

Bat / Batform

Spoiler

- At blood level x, She can turn into a bat for x seconds with (9-x) seconds cooldown. At blood levels 9 and 10, she can turn into a bat with no cooldown.

- Batform has melee attack range, 20+x*5 fixed damage, ranging from 20 to 70, attack speed is 1/s compared to other characters 2.2/s, and armor reduction is x*9%, ranging from 0% to 90%. Gear armor will be ignored.

- That means she can survive nights without light if she's lucky by turning into a bat again and again.

- Her flight speed is 8. It ignores road buff. Her left claw holds her hand slot, her right claw holds her body gear. If she wears an amulet, the amulet stays on her neck.

- during her flight, her blood meter becomes bat meter, showing how much longer her bat form can last.

- during the batform's cooldown, her blood meter's contour will display as a countdown timer.

- She can fly over abyss, water, walls, fuel weaver's prison, atrium's wall and celestial champion's walls, ruin gaps, trees, and boulders. If her landing spot is on water, she drowns.

- Upon turning into a bat, the mouse tip item will drop.

- In batform, she's able to grab 2 items from the ground or on water if her claws are not occupied.

- Right-click on the ground to start a flight. Right-click during the flight will turn her back into a human, and the unused bat time will be added to cool down. When the batform is about to end, her claw tip will touch the ground or water, allowing right-click to re-cast bat form so that she flies as a bat non-stop, given her blood meter is above 9 and her transformation has 0 cool down. This continuous flight can last for at most 1 day.

- Her transformation power is disabled when her blood meter is non-positive.

- Bats are neutral to her when x is non-positive. She can befriend up to 3 bats by walking up to them when x is positive. Bats unfriend her upon sunrise.

* number and power level can be further tuned, but i'm keeping it as simple as possible now.