Vortex Cloak

[Theukon-dos]

As it stands, the shadow rift is fairly lacking in any new toys. The scythe is fun, and the Umbralla... is an item that exists. But the Lunar rift had things like the brightshade staff and bombs. And while I won't comment on wether these are actually good or not, it does leave the shadow side of things feeling a bit bare-bones. But hey! Here's an idea, Klei's already brought over the Dark Tatters from Hamlet. So why not bring over the thing those tatters where made with too?

 

For those who don't know about Don't Starve's final DLC, the Vortex Cloak functions like a combonation of a Backpack and Bone armor. It has 10 inventory slots, and protects against 100% of the damage taken while worn and fueled. Unlike the bone armor that blocks a hit directly, the Vortex cloak instead functions the same as any other armor, just with complete protection. It also can't protect against attacks from shadow creatures, and needs to be re-fueled with either nightmare fuel or more dark tatters.

Now, I don't think this item should be added to DST as a 1-1 port, and not just because of it's sprite. But I do see a few different options for how it could be implemented. 

 

1. Direct upgrade to bone armor: As I said, the Vortex Cloak does function similarly to DST's bone armor. Whis is fine in a game where Fuelweaver doesn't exist. But might cause problems if the two co-existed. Unless, of course, the Vortex Armor was just Bone Armor+. Make the Fuelweaver drop part of the Cloak's recipe and visible on the sprite; either beneath the cloak or woven into the fabric. And then otherwise make it function exactly like bone armor with backpack slots. Maybe it could also have a little bonus planar defense too, who knows?

2. Keep the Cloak's damage resistance, but greatly lower it: Simple enough, make the cloak function as both armor and a backpack, but give it a below-average DR to compensate. I think something along the lines of 60-70% Damage Reduction and 10 planar defense would be a good way to keep the cloak relatively balanced. 

3. Scrap the defense all together, but make it a damn good backpack: An idea I had years back for the Hamlet backpack was making it able to store multiple stacks of an item per inventory slot. So logs for example normally stack to 20, but putting them in a vortex cloak could boost this up to 200. Not only would this make the vortex cloak a fantastic backpack to have without being a straight upgrade to the piggyback or Krampus sack, but I could see Megabasers liking it too. Not as many raw slots as the other options, but they also don't have to fill half the damned things with boards. Hell, maybe this mechanic could also be used for a new post-rift chest that can be used to store the bajillion logs you get from Bearger. 

 

As you can hopefully see, introducing the Vortex cloak to DST would be a great option to fill out the post-rift game. Especially on the shadow side which is rather lacking.