Is it worth using Wickerbottom to craft books and then switching to Maxwell in Don't Starve Together?

[Breno Hellyto]

What's your opinion on the strategy of using Wickerbottom to craft all the available books in Don't Starve Together, and then switching to Maxwell to use the Codex Umbra and gain access to a wide variety of abilities? Although this costs Maxwell 2.5 times more sanity to read the books, sanity is not an issue for him. Do you think this trade-off is worth it, considering that Maxwell has low health but can be assisted by a tamed Beefalo?

[Baark0]

Havent played wicker since her refresh, do you need sanity to read books or can you still spam them on 0 sanity? Cause if you can still spam then yeah, it basically means maxwell has wickers perks ontop of having his own perks, basically 2 characters in one, and because of the bookshelf that regenerates books, you never have to swap back.

If there is a limit to how much you can read, then it's still good, just not as powerful.

[Brago-sama]

Nah theres no limit. Only thing Maxwell does worse is that his sanity penalty is 80ish per use vs wickers 30ish, which doesnt matter if you read on moon island, have bone helm, or are just reading a book 1-2x for some comfort (Lux aeterna/rain rituals/tempering tempeeatures etc...)

[00petar00]

The bone helm isn't that difficult to obtain, so if you play Maxwell and have bookshelves with all the books, it's like playing two characters at once.

I would just play Maxwell as he is a better early game character and just swap later when I have enough materials to make the books I want, unless you are going to focus your early game on books, which would set you back and doesn't seem worth doing. Also, it is not that hard to assemble the celestial altar on the lunar island if you don't want to wait for the celestial orb.

[cybers2001]

If I know I'm mostly reading books, I prefer to use Wickerbottom over Maxwell just to not get hassled by nightmares too much, though as Maxwell, I may use the siviculture book while farming wood or the bee book if I want more minions for a boss fight. But depends on your style. I think most people that play as Maxwell these days main him, so they make good use of all his shadow spells, I personally, don't have much use for them.

[SirToastyToes]

I use Maxwell to farm on the Lunar Island with Bearger using his Shadow Servants to expedite picking up all the logs. A nearby bookshelf has plenty of Applied Silviculture and Practical Rain Rituals allowing me to use them and leave them to repair in the shelf.

[lakhnish]

12 hours ago, Breno Hellyto said:

What's your opinion on the strategy of using Wickerbottom to craft all the available books in Don't Starve Together, and then switching to Maxwell to use the Codex Umbra and gain access to a wide variety of abilities? Although this costs Maxwell 2.5 times more sanity to read the books, sanity is not an issue for him. Do you think this trade-off is worth it, considering that Maxwell has low health but can be assisted by a tamed Beefalo?

I play mainly Maxwell in my megabase world after trying a bit of Wickerbottom.

It's 1000% worth it because of the minions; they just make life so much more convienent. 

If you have a Bone Helm, just wear that when reading books to just ignore the nightmares. When you are done, quickly unequip and reequip the bone helm.

What that does is it despawns a lot of the nightmares if you do it enough times. Just make sure you aren't slow when spamming the reequiping.

[abrocator]

Cons

• Maxwell has less health
• Wickerbottom has vanilla DS downsides (except summoning extra shadow creatures and 125HP)
• Crafting all the books that you would want will take a while (will probably switch back)

Pros

• I hear that Maxwell is pretty good
• With a bone helm and lunar island the extra sanity cost might not matter
• You won’t have to deal with Wickerbottom’s Well Actually nerd-sass

[Maxil20]

5 hours ago, abrocator said:

Wickerbottom has vanilla DS downsides (except summoning extra shadow creatures and 125HP)

For a bit of clarification, Maxwell also has the downside of summoning extra shadow creatures if you try reading a book and it puts you to 0 sanity. Its particularly noticeable since reading a book at ~80 sanity or lower (which you can often be at due to puppets) will consistently summon a crawling horror or terrorbeak after the read completes.

[ShadowDuelist]

13 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

The bone helm isn't that difficult to obtain, so if you play Maxwell and have bookshelves with all the books, it's like playing two characters at once.

I would just play Maxwell as he is a better early game character and just swap later when I have enough materials to make the books I want, unless you are going to focus your early game on books, which would set you back and doesn't seem worth doing. Also, it is not that hard to assemble the celestial altar on the lunar island if you don't want to wait for the celestial orb.

This. It's not like Wickerbottom is a bad character, and I know that a lot of people likes her for the character itself, its just that if your goal is playing around with book magic and advancing the game through magic means, Maxwell starts off WAY up higher in power level than Wicker and realistically, it sets you back to focus early on her. I have tried many many different startup builds trying to figure how to be more relevant as Wicker in the early game than Maxwell, and I was not able to.

This was an issue brought up when the Maxwell rework happened, it was a great rework overall, its just that its the norm for most characters to have to work to gain their best perks and Wickerbottom is no exception: 

Spoiler

1. She needs to create her library
2. The library and the fact that some of her books are expensive and have very few uses sort of limits the mobility of her perks since it is way much more efficient to use them near or from within a bookstore
3. She has to focus on collecting reeds or papyrus from day one
4. She has to get some consistent method to either restore sanity, find lunar island early, kill FW early, or base at lunar grotto.
5. A beefalo or a consistent supply of weapon and armor is desired given the amount of nightmare creates she will usually face if you use magic often.

Compared to this, Maxwell comes at full power straight out of spawn, you just can improve somewhat the damage of the duelists with better equipment, but you can already accomplish a lot of things using his powers even without that boost.
Wickerbottom on the other hand, needs to work at least 10 days to  get a (very limited) access to a few books. It feels a bit unfair.

Can you still be a Wickerbottom main? of course, she's still as fun as she always was. But sadly you'll certainly advance faster if you start as Maxwell and once you got enough materials switch to wicker to only get the books.
 

Spoiler

This is why I suggested that Wicker should have some sort of magic damage resistance when at high sanity (using half sanity from all sanity consuming items when max sanity is 50% of her total or more) and having a slow book regen in her inventory (slower than the bookcase, but still worth to make books more durable and useful outside of always being nearby a bookcase.) These changes will still not make her as good as Maxwell, but it would turn her a bit more attractive to play as in the early game, at least to my point of view, since you will be able to use your perks more often in the early game.

 

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Compared to this, Maxwell comes at full power straight out of spawn, you just can improve somewhat the damage of the duelists with better equipment, but you can already accomplish a lot of things using his powers even without that boost.
Wickerbottom on the other hand, needs to work at least 10 days to  get a (very limited) access to a few books. It feels a bit unfair.

Can you still be a Wickerbottom main? of course, she's still as fun as she always was. But sadly you'll certainly advance faster if you start as Maxwell and once you got enough materials switch to wicker to only get the books.

This was a issue I still have with Maxwell's rework that being he starts out very strong and just gets stronger with little effort then he also gets to add Wickerbottom's perks to his list of abilities while I get people love the flavor of him being able to use her books I kinda feel like they should just remove his ability to interact with them for the sake of keeping some level of uniqueness for Wickerbottom.

[BezKa]

On 5/14/2023 at 12:24 AM, Breno Hellyto said:

Original image link: https://www.tumblr.com/203y/143997935867/perhaps-ill-invite-ms-wickerbottom-for-a-nice

 

[00petar00]

12 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

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I was there for the refresh and your thread but I don't think that it would make that much of a difference if your solution was implemented as playing Maxwell would still be a better choice mostly because of bone helm, it would give Wicker some breathing room but I really don't think Maxwell is balanced around the bookcase, he was able to read the books when they weren't infinite but he kept the same ability and is able to access the bookcase after reworks happened.

It would be better if bookcase was Wickerbottom only like how his magician's top hat works, it really seems like selective character locks happened here without a good reason, why am I unable to use magician's top hat as any other character while he is able to use bookcase? Some people will probably mention lore here but I don't think lore should be the defining factor when it is such a minor part of the game as this isn't the last of us (part 1 only) where majority of the players are that invested into it.

[gamehun20]

59 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

It would be better if bookcase was Wickerbottom only like how his magician's top hat works, it really seems like selective character locks happened here without a good reason, why am I unable to use magician's top hat as any other character while he is able to use bookcase? Some people will probably mention lore here but I don't think lore should be the defining factor when it is such a minor part of the game as this isn't the last of us (part 1 only) where majority of the players are that invested into it.

If the book case is locked how is wurt going to read the books for sanity?

You have two other interfaces to access the shadow storage, shadow chester and the magician box.

not every item has to be usable by everyone and not every item has to be character locked

[00petar00]

11 minutes ago, gamehun20 said:

If the book case is locked how is wurt going to read the books for sanity?

You have two other interfaces to access the shadow storage, shadow chester and the magician box.

not every item has to be usable by everyone and not every item has to be character locked

Why should Maxwell be able to use all of Wickerbottom's books permanently so you are able to use bookcases as Wurt? That is such a minor thing when Maxwell is completely eclipsing Wickerbottom in all stages of the game and this should be a priority over that. 

Also nothing is stopping you reading books for sanity, you just aren't able to repair them and Wurt is already very strong in the late game.

 

 

[HeatAndRun]

I think if books durability regenerates when in Wikcerbottom's inventory it would encourage playing Wickerbottom more in after mid/end-game.

Or another backpack which is the book version of seed-pack it which regenerates book durability and only can be used by Wickerbottom.

[Mysterious box]

5 hours ago, gamehun20 said:

If the book case is locked how is wurt going to read the books for sanity?

By a Wickerbottom giving her a book as it used to be.

5 hours ago, gamehun20 said:

You have two other interfaces to access the shadow storage, shadow chester and the magician box.

not every item has to be usable by everyone and not every item has to be character locked

This is correct but reversed in this situation Maxwell as a character wouldn't lose anything if every character could use his magician's tophat while on the other hand a Wickerbottom loses a lot when her entire skill set is replaced with another character without a need to ever visit her again.

 

7 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

I was there for the refresh and your thread but I don't think that it would make that much of a difference if your solution was implemented as playing Maxwell would still be a better choice mostly because of bone helm, it would give Wicker some breathing room but I really don't think Maxwell is balanced around the bookcase, he was able to read the books when they weren't infinite but he kept the same ability and is able to access the bookcase after reworks happened.

It would be better if bookcase was Wickerbottom only like how his magician's top hat works, it really seems like selective character locks happened here without a good reason, why am I unable to use magician's top hat as any other character while he is able to use bookcase? Some people will probably mention lore here but I don't think lore should be the defining factor when it is such a minor part of the game as this isn't the last of us (part 1 only) where majority of the players are that invested into it.

I feel like the best call would be to completely remove the bookcase's regen function and move it to her inventory but give her a new craft that lets her directly repair books in the bookcase incase she wants to multi cast.