Wilson's skill tree should have a Meat Effigy path

[EthanTheMime]

I think it's an interesting concept. The Meat Effigy is already heavily related to him to the point where it almost feels like a non-character-specific, character-specific craft. Really, I've always thought Wilson having access to revival tools was thematically fitting and also really helped to accentuate his role as a sort of beginner character. I know that a lot of people aren't really into the idea of going down that path for his rework, but the idea of him having a back-up for every time he dies is absolutely befitting to his character, and it seems Klei would agree.

Wilson is a scientist--maybe sometimes it's beakers and potions--but I think, largely, he's just a scientist in the sense that he is captivated by the world around him and willing to do anything it takes so long as it means he can sate his curiosity. To me, this is exactly why Wilson was able to rise against Maxwell and take the Throne before any of the other survivors; he was the only one willing to try Adventure Mode over and over again because he had questions left unanswered.

In that sense, the Meat Effigy sort of encourages Wilson players to act with the same trial-and-error mindset. You can better afford to take a chance, maybe die, but then learn from your mistakes. That's sort of the idea of the game, right? I can't think of a better character to attribute such a central concept to than the icon himself.

As for what Meat Effigy upgrades would look like--not sure! I'm curious to see if you guys have any ideas.

[Evelo]

I would prefer this over the Alchemy.
I personally feel the Alchemy skill line should just be a Station where Wilson can do his experiments in transmutation.

[maxwell_winters]

What is there to upgrade? He already has the easiest access to the recipe. The effigy doesn't even have a permanent health penalty and doesn't require meat like it's used to.  

[Creatorofswamps]

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[EthanTheMime]

50 minutes ago, maxwell_winters said:

What is there to upgrade? He already has the easiest access to the recipe. The effigy doesn't even have a permanent health penalty and doesn't require meat like it's used to.  

I think there's still a plethora of things you could change to make it more accessible and useful to Wilson. Cheaper resource/health costs on craft, lowering the stat penalty on respawn, allowing him to keep his beard and maybe even preserve items inside of it between deaths, etc.

The mastery reward could be simple or something totally out of the blue like the torch tossing. Spitballing, but maybe it could allow you to respawn directly where you died a la Life Giving Amulet? It could always have some sort of trade-off like opting into a max health penalty. On that note, if any of this sounds too powerful, the base Meat Effigy could always be nerfed to make room for the upgrades, but I feel as though that wouldn't be necessary.

I'm sure the clever developers at Klei could think of a multitude of interesting things, even if it means fundamentally changing the Effigy.

[CameoAppearance]

Letting him keep his beard when he respawns would be a nice upgrade; it's always frustrating to lose all that insulation and potential resources even without beard storage. I don't think the recipe costs need to be lowered any further because they are easier to meet now than in singleplayer or the DST beta, and I would definitely be against changing the base effigy to make the upgrades more impressive.

[SuperDonuts]

Very nice idea. Wilson could also use this path to help other players. I feel the gobai rework is very centered on Wilson playing alone. Building better reviving items or healing items for the entire team would be nice.

[ButterStuffed]

2 hours ago, EthanTheMime said:

Spitballing, but maybe it could allow you to respawn directly where you died a la Life Giving Amulet

Maybe if your beard is fully magnificent, then it allows you to do this. At the cost of the beard of course.

[Stonetribe]

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't haven't actually tried using it myself and I'm getting this information from the wiki which has lead me astray before, but the way the meat effigy currently works in DST is that a player has to interact with it to become attuned before it can revive them, and each effigy can only become attuned to one player at a time, is that right? So what if effigy's built by Wilson worked more like the life giving amulet where any player can just haunt them to be resurrected with no attuning required.

Although really I'd rather they just work like this by default, but I also won't complain about Wilson getting unique team perks. If I'm properly understanding on how they work that is, again someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

[GenomeSquirrel]

22 minutes ago, Stonetribe said:

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't haven't actually tried using it myself and I'm getting this information from the wiki which has lead me astray before, but the way the meat effigy currently works in DST is that a player has to interact with it to become attuned before it can revive them, and each effigy can only become attuned to one player at a time, is that right? So what if effigy's built by Wilson worked more like the life giving amulet where any player can just haunt them to be resurrected with no attuning required.

Although really I'd rather they just work like this by default, but I also won't complain about Wilson getting unique team perks. If I'm properly understanding on how they work that is, again someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Both are true

A benefit of effigies is that they teleport you to where they were placed, so you could revive in the safety and abundance of base instead of where you died, right next to what killed you, with scattered resources that may make safe revival impossible.

[Stonetribe]

23 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Both are true

A benefit of effigies is that they teleport you to where they were placed, so you could revive in the safety and abundance of base instead of where you died, right next to what killed you, with scattered resources that may make safe revival impossible.

Okay cool, thank you. Personally, I'd rather float towards the effigy myself if it meant anyone could conveniently use it, but now that I think about it if multiple players could be attuned to the same effigy then we'd have the best of both worlds.

Unless there's some sort of internal mechanic preventing such a thing that I'm not aware of.

[-Variant]

8 hours ago, Stonetribe said:

if multiple players could be attuned to the same effigy then we'd have the best of both worlds.

To my knowledge there's nothing really preventing this, per say, but it does make for an awkward scenario.

I'm of the belief it isn't this way because it'd be confusing to have multiple people attuned to 1 effigy only for it to still be single use.
A group of people attuned to the one effigy lose out entirely the second someone dies and uses it, making it pointless for multiple people to be attuned in the first place.
Defeats the purpose, I feel.

[Stonetribe]

11 hours ago, -Variant said:

To my knowledge there's nothing really preventing this, per say, but it does make for an awkward scenario.

I'm of the belief it isn't this way because it'd be confusing to have multiple people attuned to 1 effigy only for it to still be single use.
A group of people attuned to the one effigy lose out entirely the second someone dies and uses it, making it pointless for multiple people to be attuned in the first place.
Defeats the purpose, I feel.

That's fair, I was just thinking that as long as one person can revive in the event of a total party kill, they can prepare other resurrection methods for the rest of the players like telltale hearts. I'd appreciate the option is all.

[EthanTheMime]

On 3/8/2023 at 2:57 PM, Stonetribe said:

That's fair, I was just thinking that as long as one person can revive in the event of a total party kill, they can prepare other resurrection methods for the rest of the players like telltale hearts. I'd appreciate the option is all.

That could be an interesting idea for a Mastery upgrade: some kind of "Super Effigy" that has one use per player akin to the Touch Stones?

It could even have its own appearance, like a larger effigy that's visibly distended from the sheer amount of beard hair and meat it's been stuffed with--gross! Maybe even a crazier one with a bunch of arms or heads (my mind goes to the effigies from The Forest).

[bjanmanjs]

On 3/7/2023 at 7:52 PM, GenomeSquirrel said:

each effigy can only become attuned to one player at a time

I thought there could be more than player attuned to the same effigy; I believe I remember people using my effigy to revive and the effigy icon on the health meter disappearing with a sound effect right as they revived. Was this changed? I'd run a quick test in-game, but I can't test this by myself as it'd require two players.

[-Variant]

2 minutes ago, bjanmanjs said:

I thought there could be more than player attuned to the same effigy

Only player can be attuned at a time.
I believe what you described is someone else attuning to it, revoking your relationship with it.

[bjanmanjs]

3 hours ago, -Variant said:

I believe what you described is someone else attuning to it, revoking your relationship with it.

I disabled all my client mods and hopped onto a Klei server (in the main branch, since I couldn't find an English-speaking one in the beta branch) and made a meat effigy, and later while I was away from it someone said they were attuned to it, and I still had the icon on my health meter. Later I went to the caves and it was gone (due to being in a different shard), and it came back after I returned to the surface, and then later I moused over the meat effigy and the LMB action was Examine (without holding ALT).

Another player also mentioned that multiple people can attune to the same effigy.

I'll try and do some more testing in the beta branch when there's English speakers playing and see if I can witness someone attuning to my effigy.

If it is possible for more than one person to attune to the same one then I agree that it would make more sense for it to be one person per effigy.

[MondayNight]

Wilson's re-balance, I reckon, is a little bit more geared towards mid-to-late game players since, out-of-gate, Wilson still retains his beginner/newbie-friendly status as no pros/no cons/no special mechanisms character and only later on his skills are acquired. Hence, at least moderately-experienced people will benefit in the end from Willy's RPG-like skill tree. While Torch and Beard routes are debatable, but favorable even late-game, a reviving skill tied to magic tab (most of bulk player-base don't access anyway) ends up rather useless for experienced players - the theoretical target "audience"; as such some Meat Effigy additional path would enter pretty much needlessness territory. Better polish existing tree-skills.

[Creatorofswamps]

I hope they get something related to the Meat Effigy

[Ornge]

One perk of this meat effigy path could be related to the telltale heart. Any player that wilson revives with it WON'T get any max health penalties

[Creatorofswamps]

[EthanTheMime]

On 3/12/2023 at 9:52 AM, MostMerryTomcat said:

Wilson's re-balance, I reckon, is a little bit more geared towards mid-to-late game players since, out-of-gate, Wilson still retains his beginner/newbie-friendly status as no pros/no cons/no special mechanisms character and only later on his skills are acquired. Hence, at least moderately-experienced people will benefit in the end from Willy's RPG-like skill tree. While Torch and Beard routes are debatable, but favorable even late-game, a reviving skill tied to magic tab (most of bulk player-base don't access anyway) ends up rather useless for experienced players - the theoretical target "audience"; as such some Meat Effigy additional path would enter pretty much needlessness territory. Better polish existing tree-skills.

This was pretty insightful! You're definitely right about this update not really having much to do with Wilson's early game, and I hadn't considered how the skill tree intrinsically reflects this. Still, I guess I don't really agree with the reasoning that we should overlook the Effigy because it might not specifically benefit late-game players, especially if it's through the lens of a "target audience". I also kind of want to point out that I left this concept intentionally open-ended, and I think there are a number of interesting ways to approach the Effigy, and even potentially move away from its revival mechanic. I mentioned in another reply that I think it would be cool to have some sort of trade-off for the final upgrade. The player growing out of the second-chance mechanic as they progress sounds kind of exciting to me (and somewhat in-character for Wilson). 

The magic of the skill tree is that it leaves the players to allocate their points toward what they find worth it. I do think that some of the current skills could use some revisiting, and I understand how it might be contentious to add a path knowing it’s divisive in this way (in regards to the experience level of players). But again, I imagine there are ways to set about this idea without that being an issue.