Wolfgang Progression Issue and an Idea to fix it

[IAmAFurrz]

As you all might know, Wolfgang has been a badly design character since the beginning, being "Wilson but better'. After his rework, he's still badly designed, Klei slapped dumbells into his crafting menu and called it progression, and it sorta worked because it made people mad that he isn't braindead anymore. Then they made it so he can easily get mighty with the basic dumbell which i find bad design as well, and now he's back to square 1 of being bad design (tbf, him holding his dumbell while moving reducing his mightiness drain is a good idea) 

Here is 1 suggestion to how you can make it so he has some ok progression: make dumbells have maximums that he can reach, that would make sense (lighter dumbells really shouldnt be able to get him stronger, same with how in lifting you dont get stronger without upping the weights)

Stone dumbell: 40 (would be good incentive since he now gets 10% speed from 'Leg day' on the skill tree in the beta)

Gold dumbell: 50, but with faster might gain

Marbell: 80, but once mightiness gets to 70 it halts

Gembell: 100, and with the old might gain

I came up with this due to the beta having his gym give him new mightiness maximum.

I think this would address his progression design being a fake one that Klei put in so people would HAVE to get better dumbells, then they just gave in to the masses to make him easy again.

This way it'd make it so he HAS to go into either ruins, or archives + kill a bishop (tho i feel he should be forced to craft the gembell at a Shadow Manipulator/Pseudoscience Station but still keep the recipe unlocked, not that it matters since it lasts so long), and rewards good players with mighty Wolfgang.

[abrocator]

Pre-rework Wolfgang was well-designed. It was simple and straightforward and you had to manage your hunger.

The current rework is only decent. It’s not mind-numbingly tedious like the first round of rework, but it also makes him easier to play since you can just click F to get mighty. (One of the goals of the rework was to make him more difficult…)

Simplicity is a really important design principle. Early DS had simplicity since there weren’t that many mechanics there to begin with.

But simplicity has been replaced with silly pseudo-roleplaying. Like why should Walter just have 110 hunger? And 130 health? And a bee allergy? He already has plenty of downsides. Is it because he’s a child? See, that’s an example of favoring pseudo-roleplaying over simplicity and balance. Wendy is also a child but she only has the 75% damage reduction. Crucially not because she’s a child but because she’s got an AoE companion.

Same with Wolfgang: why should I care about working out in a video game? And (see OP) why should I care about the tedium of “same with how in lifting you dont get stronger without upping the weights”? Does being a glutton make you strong in real life? No not at all, but it is a simple and elegant system since you have to manage something else than you hitting stuff or standing still for half a minute or building fugly workout gyms in the base.

[Toroic]

While using hunger to determine Wolf’s form was easy to understand and use, the problem is that in Don’t Starve hunger is:

1) Not very difficult to deal with to begin with

2) Becomes less difficult to deal with over time

3) There are multiple items that reduce your hunger rate (belt of hunger being a classic example and mostly only an item Wolfgang used)

The end result with this is that higher hunger drain just wasn’t a very impactful downside for the huge set of perks that Wolfgang got from mighty form.

Under the current system, mightiness is something that needs to be maintained via fighting, working, rowing, etc and you now have a dumbbell competing for your hand slot outside of combat instead of a cane or lantern.

It’s not as easy to understand now but it is a much more effective downside and if you’re caught out wimpy and a fight happens it’s going to be a bad time.