I LOVE this new beta!

[lovegroove]

I have been playing this game for a couple of years now, and I have never been this excited about new content. I love the idea of talent trees in dst, so the player can individualize more, providing a lot more depth to these amazing characters. 

Now the only character I have been checking out more extensively is Woodie, and I must say I have been in awe at how much of an early game powerhouse he is! Immediate 15% movement speed for everybody, 70% dmg reduction helmets that cost almost nothing, right off the bat Woodie brings a big boost to the team. 

The Weregoose Mastery point, which lets you teleport around the map is crazy good. One single use of a Goose Idol gives you a maximum of 5 teleports, and the transformation timer talents don't raise this number. It gives you the layout of 5 different biomes, can even take you to the ruins / lunar island / atrium, all for the low cost of 3 monster meat and 3 seeds. 

The Werebeaver Mastery lets you slap the ground for a max of 14 times, and the transformation timer talents also do not affect this. It wipes out a big circle of trees or boulders around you, and even uproots saplings, tufts, bushes and stumps. One beaver only using stomps can knock down half the mosaic biome in seconds. If you plant your trees really closely you can farm insane amounts of wood, at a speed that even bearger can't dream of - finally crowning Woodie as the king of wood-cutting.

The Weremoose Mastery says it gives you a tougher hide, but I'm not sure in what way. I let a tallbird hit me in my untalented Moose form and got 5 dmg per hit (tallbird dealing 50 damage reduced by 90%), then I leveled up the mastery, ate another Moose Idol, but the tallbird still did 5 dmg to me.

Throwing stronger punches lets every 4th consecutive attack deal 136 dmg. The 4th attack is also an aoe attack, but since your hitrecovery resets the count of your punches when too many enemies are attacking you, it's only effective against lower numbers of enemies. The charge is still the king of aoe dmg for Woodie - now the bane of any number of treeguards. Against a treeguard, both punch and charge deal 59 dmg when untalented, 79 dmg with treeguard feller 1, and 119 dmg with feller 2, doubling the speed in which you can charge them down. It's also incredibly safe too - the attack of the treeguard is so slow, that it can never hit you mid-charge. So even when fighting 20 of them, you will never loose any health, if you space out your attacks right. Being able to stop mid charge is also a huge deal, now you can aoe trample even faster and more efficiently, instead of having to finish the super long charge animation every time.

The health regeneration is also really good, with 3 health recovered every 5 seconds, making it a little better than half the efficiency of jellybeans (which recover 2 health every 2 seconds). Combining that with something like a heartrending ballad from Wigfrid, makes for a more than formidable foe for any boss fight. The cost efficiency can also not be understated - 3 monster meat and 2 grass is nothing compared to what you have to pay for, to get 90% dmg reduction, nightvision, health reg, damage boost and charge. Not to forget immunity to shadow creatures with the shadow affinity, which can be a game changer, while rushing ruins, or make any boss fight where you go insane, a lot less messy. 

The Treeguard Idol is also amazing - on a normal run I was able to find 2 totally normal trees on day 3, and turned those 6 living logs into 3 Idols,Then I killed the 6 treeguards using the moose idol, giving me 36 living logs by day 5. 

Curse Embracer returns you from your transformation with 23 hunger, and removes the damage cost, when eating the idols. That combined with the lunar affinity (which turns off Woodies involuntary transformations during full moon) effectively removes all downsides to Woodie, turning his curse into nothing but a blessing. 

 

That's all I found out so far, and overall I just really love how powerful this makes me feel ingame. And I haven't even talked about Woodie being able to craft boards with only 3 logs, or the gather speed (which really is a huge quality of life improvement). Giving that much more depth and nuance to the survivors, is the best thing that ever happened to this game, in my opinion! Thank you Klei, for this beautiful gem of a game. 

[Gashzer]

Been playing alot of Woodie in this beta too, Woodies wereforms were always fun but now even more so as they are alot more practical to use.

I think weremoose mastery has planar defence?? Got slapped around by ink blights and didnt take too much damage as moose. Not 100% tho.

[gamehun20]

49 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

I think weremoose mastery has planar defence?? Got slapped around by ink blights and didnt take too much damage as moose. Not 100% tho.

I heard something like that the form has defence

[Arcwell]

6 hours ago, Gashzer said:

I think weremoose mastery has planar defence?? Got slapped around by ink blights and didnt take too much damage as moose. Not 100% tho.

Weremoose (with or without skills) is unique in that its 90% damage reduction applies to all damage (planar included).

Weremoose mastery gives +10 planar defense, but because it applies before the 90% reduction, it ends up saving 10 * 0.1 = 1 damage at most.

[Superblackmamba]

I wonder when they'll conclude this beta and make it available for all platforms.

[CyberSkink]

I ABSOLUTELY ADORE it! I don’t know why some people are trying to rain on this parade, but I low key want them to stop…

[Dextops]

1 hour ago, CyberSkink said:

I ABSOLUTELY ADORE it! I don’t know why some people are trying to rain on this parade, but I low key want them to stop…

I think criticism is valid because well, what’s the point of the forums without it and that this beta does have rough edges. Though with that said I love this update 

[CyberSkink]

Just now, Dextops said:

I think criticism is valid because well, what’s the point of the forums without it and that this beta does have rough edges. Though with that said I love this update 

Oh, absolutely! But I don’t want people to complain and say to remove it entirely without proper reasoning.

[Evelo]

8 hours ago, CyberSkink said:

I ABSOLUTELY ADORE it! I don’t know why some people are trying to rain on this parade, but I low key want them to stop…

7 hours ago, CyberSkink said:

But I don’t want people to complain and say to remove it entirely without proper reasoning.

I've said it a hundred times and i'll say it a million more. The talent trees (especially Wormwood) are incentivizing the use of the Celestial Portal. I hate that it does because I hate the Celestial Portal. If you cannot change your talents on the world I would enjoy the system more. Removing the Celestial Portal would make me ecstatic.

(For others on a different posts saying "you want to control how others play" turns out, yea I do. I genuinely think the game would be better for everyone if you couldn't change characters practically whenever you wanted.)

[_zwb]

2 hours ago, Evelo said:

I've said it a hundred times and i'll say it a million more. The talent trees (especially Wormwood) are incentivizing the use of the Celestial Portal. I hate that it does because I hate the Celestial Portal. If you cannot change your talents on the world I would enjoy the system more. Removing the Celestial Portal would make me ecstatic.

(For others on a different posts saying "you want to control how others play" turns out, yea I do. I genuinely think the game would be better for everyone if you couldn't change characters practically whenever you wanted.)

If they removed the celestial portal, they better add another way of character swapping, more expensive or whatever, but there has to be one. It just makes the game much easier for groups of players because they have a wider character choice ...why are you punishing me for playing alone again? Klei had this weird "it's not intend for solo" philosophy when designing some terrible bosses like Toadstool, why would you want to see them adding more of this to the game?

[Evelo]

Just now, _zwb said:

If they removed the celestial portal, they better add another way of character swapping, more expensive or whatever, but there has to be one. It just makes the game much easier for groups of players because they have a wider character choice ...why are you punishing me for playing alone again? Klei had this weird "it's not intend for solo" philosophy when designing some terrible bosses like Toadstool, why would you want to see them adding more of this to the game?

I play exclusively solo. Because no bosses have an enrage or despawn timer, you can take however long you want to on a fight. Skill trees are about choice, supposedly. The FIRST choice you make when you enter a world is which character to play. That should be the determining factor for the rest of that world. In come skill trees which is the next line of choices after numerous other choices (where to set up camp/base, what to do for food, what order to kill bosses, etc etc.). The Celestial Portal removes that first (and skill tree) choice(s) because the monumental impact from playing one character is erased once you have to ability to play every character.

Neat little tricks that work in teams can now be abused in solo play. Maxwell can read Wickerbottom's books? That's really neat, could be fun to play with a friend and experience that. But with the Celestial Portal just make the books and swap to Maxwell. What's the point of even having Wickerbottom then in a solo game? If you select Maxwell when starting the world, I personally think it would be more enjoyable, to not be able to ever craft Wickerbottom's books. Since all worlds are on servers you could always just get a friend to log in and make the books to circumvent the process (which I also think is stupid).

Change it so Maxy and Wurt can only read Wickerbottom's books when there is a Wickerbottom in the world. Winona's Catapults only work when there is a Winona roaming the world. As it stands you can be your own friend in DST. Everyone is just a Wilson and the unique perks everyone gets benefit Wilson with none of the downsides, at least for solo.

Wanda is a great character because if you swap off of her, you cannot use any of her tools. She can benefit multiplayer scenarios so long as Wanda is in control. A player chose to play wanda and is rewarded with her unique upsides and downsides that can affect the team as a whole. Same situation for WX (Circuits), Wortox (soul healing), Wendy (Abigail).

I want player choice to matter. If you chose a specific character, I want you to be rewarded for picking them and suffer the consequences for not picking someone else. Why should I, completely alone, be able to explore the world as a goose, command the moon and weather, create berry bushes, monkey tails, and lureplants, have an army of merms, have catapults launching rocks, while I ate a spicy volt jello and attacked with the power of a Russian Weightlifter? No one individual should be able to have that much power. Now if you had 7 friends then that is a really cool synergy! It will make it feel special to combine all the powers like the gaggle of Captain Planet kids for such power.

Solo players will have to become creative and use different strategies that emphasizes the characters upsides whilst minimizing their downsides. Overcoming an obstacle is extremely rewarding, it's why so many people love difficult games. Force players to lean into their chosen character more so when playing alone to maximize their potential.

I wouldn't say the bosses are terribly designed, Toadstool can be quite fun solo, it becomes a slog when he becomes a meat sponge. Same goes with Bee Queen, Crab King, CC. AFW is different because while his Health pool is small enough, players especially solo are under a very strict time limit on when they can deal damage. Just allowing some more wiggle room by even 2 seconds would make AFW more fun solo.

Hopefully that makes sense? I honestly just might copy and paste this over because I didn't expect to go on such a rant about this and why I dislike the CP and the skill tree interaction with the CP.

[_zwb]

7 minutes ago, Evelo said:

That should be the determining factor for the rest of that world

That's a bold assumption, how do you know it should be a determing factor?

8 minutes ago, Evelo said:

Neat little tricks that work in teams can now be abused in solo play.

That's what I was saying, you're making the game difficult for solo players because the game is already designed to be played in groups and you want to lock those character combo behind multiplayer. What? Solo players can experience the same thing as multiplayer? How dare Klei make life easier for solo players?

 

13 minutes ago, Evelo said:

Change it so Maxy and Wurt can only read Wickerbottom's books when there is a Wickerbottom in the world. Winona's Catapults only work when there is a Winona roaming the world.

This would only make characters like Winona see less play, CP is not what makes her irrelevant, it's the fact that she has no interesting perks beyond building catapults, I'm not going to play Wilson that drains hunger when crafting for thousands of days. But characters like Wickerbottom would see more play because she has actual perks that makes her gameplay different.

 

17 minutes ago, Evelo said:

Why should I, completely alone, be able to explore the world as a goose, command the moon and weather, create berry bushes, monkey tails, and lureplants, have an army of merms, have catapults launching rocks, while I ate a spicy volt jello and attacked with the power of a Russian Weightlifter?

You cannot do these all at once, and again you would be able to do the same playing multiplayer if CP was removed. So why lock things specifically for multiplayer if the game already can be enjoyable for solo (the entire DS is the proof of that)?

21 minutes ago, Evelo said:

Toadstool can be quite fun solo

Your definition of fun is very different from mine huh?

[Evelo]

9 hours ago, _zwb said:

That's a bold assumption, how do you know it should be a determing factor?

Choice. It is a choice. The Celestial Portal removes choice because you can pick one character and change your mind whenever, nullifying the decision.

9 hours ago, _zwb said:

That's what I was saying, you're making the game difficult for solo players because the game is already designed to be played in groups and you want to lock those character combo behind multiplayer. What? Solo players can experience the same thing as multiplayer? How dare Klei make life easier for solo players?

The game is not more difficult for solo players, it is an entirely different experience. I don't think solo players should experience the same thing as multiplayer. It punishes and rewards choice. If you have 18 people so you can experience the unique identities of each character cool! That's awesome. A single player should suffer the consequences of their decision as should each of those 18 players. That one player who picked Wurt and Wigfrid in the lobby of 18? Well they have to adapt. The interaction between Wicker and Maxy is special and feels more novel because you can't do that combo in solo (ideally). You can still have fun with the game as a solo player and being locked into your chosen character.

 

9 hours ago, _zwb said:

This would only make characters like Winona see less play, CP is not what makes her irrelevant, it's the fact that she has no interesting perks beyond building catapults, I'm not going to play Wilson that drains hunger when crafting for thousands of days. But characters like Wickerbottom would see more play because she has actual perks that makes her gameplay different.

If you want to use a characters upsides, you HAVE to suffer the downsides. Yes Winona, and Willow need changes so they are actually fun to play but right now because of the CP Klei can wave their hands and ignore the core issues with the character since people still use Winona for her upsides.

 

9 hours ago, _zwb said:

You cannot do these all at once, and again you would be able to do the same playing multiplayer if CP was removed. So why lock things specifically for multiplayer if the game already can be enjoyable for solo (the entire DS is the proof of that)?

You 100% can "have an army of merms, have catapults launching rocks, while I ate a spicy volt jello and attacked with the power of a Russian Weightlifter" all at once. Locking it to multiplayer makes the unique interactions between characters a more novel experience for when the solo player occasionally dabbles in MP. There should be times when a solo player goes "Damn, wish I had W character right now, ah well I'll try something different" I say should because it reinforces their choice. You chose to play that character, suffer the upsides and the downsides.

 

9 hours ago, _zwb said:

Your definition of fun is very different from mine huh?

I suppose that's what this all boils down too. I think my version of fun would be more enjoyable and healthy for the entire DST player base. It's an opinion. That's all it is.

[_zwb]

15 hours ago, Evelo said:

choice

Your arguments are based on that choices do and should matter, yet there's no proof of that. Honestly choices doesn't really matter if you're skilled enough, playing any character is the same as others, not like you can't progress without playing W character.

15 hours ago, Evelo said:

my version of fun would be more enjoyable and healthy for the entire DST player base.

I would love to see some more explanation on your version of fun. Personally fighting Toadstool is a torture because of how often he spams that tree growing thing, not sure what makes it "fun" for you.

[Evelo]

10 hours ago, _zwb said:

Your arguments are based on that choices do and should matter, yet there's no proof of that. Honestly choices doesn't really matter if you're skilled enough, playing any character is the same as others, not like you can't progress without playing W character.

I would love to see some more explanation on your version of fun. Personally fighting Toadstool is a torture because of how often he spams that tree growing thing, not sure what makes it "fun" for you.

Pick Wilson you can do anything except make all the unique things all the other characters have access to (as well as his own unique alchemy transmutations). Pick Wormwood you can't heal from food. Wurt can't eat meat or talk to the pig king. Wigfrid can't eat vegies. These affect gameplay because of a choice you made to select a certain character. Now, you can lean into a character heavily and use their unique crafts (Merms, Spiders, shadows, curses, catapults, bramble, etc) or you can avoid all of that and use only stuff everyone has access to. (Darksword, log suit, thulecite crown, etc). The choice you make and their negatives definitely affect how you play one character from another to create a little bump in the road while their upsides can potentially be an alternative method to play the game. This is meant to differentiate the different characters. Even in multiplayer you still have the disadvantages imposed by your chosen character, but you have the upsides from playing with others to create synergies that cannot be found in solo. It makes multiplayer a more novel experience and encourages finding, making, and playing with friends rather than just being alone and having access to all the things multiplayers offers.

Granted some characters are too similar to others because of their lack of noticeable downside they feel like base Wilson with no skill tree with only positives (Wicker, Wolfgang, Wendy, Willow, Woodie, basically all the pre RoG era characters)

I think Toadstool's HP is what makes him feel like torture. Cut it down to 2 waves of Tree chopping per phase and it would be more enjoyable as a solo player. As it stand it is a slog because of that exactly, he does the tree spawning too much because it takes too long to drain the gargantuan health pool.