Hot Take: Willow should of never been added to DST, and a Fire character will never work in DST

[Nnumber3]

(heh, title pun)

Before the 5 willow mains hang me, Please note that I am NOT talking about removing her from current dst.

As the title says, willow should never been added to DST, and stayed in Don't Starve single player.

 She is Fundamentally broken since she has been added to DST and a fire character does not work in this game.

First, History Lesson! lets go back to Don't starve, she was VERY different in this game, with her lighter with infinite uses, and her downside: making fires when she is at low sanity, 6 and below, very destructive while you're at base or a forest. she was a... b- tier character, fine, she was fun when you wanted fire mayhem.

When Dst was first made, she was the same, as Ds which was bad, for obvious reasons as plenty of burnet bases ensue. Then she was changed to no longer have fire immunity, 50%, lighter lasts 20 clock segments instead of infinite, no longer make fires while insane, and 10% increase to all sanity sources, good and bad (etc dusk and night costs more sanity but dwarf star gives more sanity)

then she was changed to become cold while insane, taking freezing damage, whitch also was spectacularly annoying as you had to be right near a fire to get Nightmare fuel, and still not a fun downside.

She got her Final rework later, No longer being cold while insane, she instead having less cold insulation. she was her BERNIE, which is a big teddy to fight nightmare creatures, he was pretty bad for a little bit, as he only protected willow, and no one else. She also got full fire immunity back, with a few small fire perks such as better fuel efficiency.

Thats the end of the road for her, now to wait for her skilltree

Now why she should not be here: 

Fire characters can't work in this game, as fire has a snowball effect, as 1 burning tree turns into 2 burning tree, then 6 burning tree turns into then spreads to your base. and of course, things you don't want burning. They successfully turned the rapid fire spread in DS into shouldering, which is good, yet her fire damage is so bad, easy solution right? wrong, just upping her damage with fire won't work as the loot gets burnt, even if fire did 9999999 damage, it won't matter as you won't get any drops. Another easy solution right?, just don't make loot get burnt? nope, as fire can spread to undesirable things, including the loot that drops on the floor from the enemy, if we make items not flammable from willow fire, then how about collateral damage? as every time you use fire with her there would craters of nothing everywhere, including nonrenewable things, like cacti from fights like volt goats or hounds. then make willows fire not spread then, you think. we will get back to that with my next point.

Fire is too situational:

Fire is meant as a crowd control, yet freezing them with  a ice staff is much better, but with willow, as fire restores her sanity its different. generally for sanity its more practical to eat sanity food or a top hat or tam, as setting a tree on fire every time you want sanity takes too long for the sanity you get. There is no real reason to set a tree on fire other then heat, not sanity. So if we use fire as a exclusive weapon, would would it work? i have seen some cool skill trees making her a fire mage, yet as said above  to make it viable it has to have all those things, yet below it would show the issue with that. turning into a fire mage is too big for a skilltree, feel it would warrant a full rework update. any other fire ability's like Molotov cocktails suffer from the same issue as above and below.

 

Anti- synergy with every1 else.

When things on fire, fire does damage to things around it, including players, and fire in general is negative to every1 but willow, easy fix, make fire not hurt other players.

But heres the main Problem: if we make Willow fire non spreadable, no damage to players, don't burn loot, and all of fires problems, then its not fire anymore, that's fancy poison. The reason fire is fun is BECAUSE of its destructive nature.

Fire can't be good as if we solve all its problems in fights, then its not fire, its poison.

Like doing all these changes would help willow definitely, but she won't be the fire starter, she would be the poison starter, and strip everything that was cool about her. like having a niche for damage over time damage would be great! just not for willow.

 

Just a thought while trying to go to sleep and put it on computer screen. Or maybe my 1am brain is going insane thinking this and should take a nap.

Spoiler

Surprised I did not mention greifing? Greifing never been a part of her as torch's exist, and when you join a world that has already started you get enough materials for 2 1/2 torch's

 

 

 

[Gashzer]

If the wall cheese didnt exist for dragonfly, Willow and her immunity to fire would be 1000000x more useful as she would be one of the few characters able to easily solo her. 

Immunity to klaus' fire spell boosts the amount of dps you can do to him.

Lighting clockworks on fire with a torch and not having to worry about the fire damage is a nice enough perk... i would only do this tactic as willow. I do wish the her lighter lit mobs on fire 100% of the time tho. Bit weird needing to craft a torch when she has her own fire tool.

I really like bernie and his mechanics. As a whole character, Willow is much better character than people give her credit for. Faster cooking on her lighter while on the go is an S-tier side perk. Combined with Willows ability to down blue caps like theres no tomorrow and not needing to worry about shadow creatures during boss fights due to bernie makes her a very nomadic character that excels if your base only consists of an alchemy engine, shadow manipulator and a couple of chests lol.

Her fire related perks are lack luster i agree. I feel a rework of fire damage in general would help to fix this. Loot dropping on fire instead of already being ash and increasing fire damage over time. Willow could then get skills that prevent the loot dropping on fire at all after a mob dies while on fire and to further boost fire damage with things like the fire staff or a new craftable like different throwable fire bombs.

Edit: A skill to allow Willow to extinguish anything that is fully on fire for the cost of 5 sanity would make her become an anti-griefer character..... and give her full control over any mistakes you do relating to using fire to kill things.

 

[_zwb]

49 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

If the wall cheese didnt exist for dragonfly, Willow and her immunity to fire would be 1000000x more useful as she would be one of the few characters able to easily solo her. 

People would simply rush the ruins and get star callers for winter instead, this singular niche wouldn't fix Willow... At best this would make people craft 2 ice staves before fight, which isn't difficult to acquire anyways.

49 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

 

Edit: The forums are struggling to load recently, looks like my comment got duplicated

[Gashzer]

1 minute ago, _zwb said:

People would simply rush the ruins and get star callers for winter instead, this singular niche wouldn't fix Willow...

Rush ruins with what gems tho? 

Dragonfly is the perfect boss to fight before heading into the ruins, i always make sure to kill her before headin down... removes the RNG of finding green/yellow gems. And its a pretty big singular niche to have as dfly has such good rewards that help so much in the early game and i feel like Willow has been cheated out of it.

I know klei will never fix the wall cheese cause if they were goin to fix it they would of done it years ago. Plus the way the magma pits spawn one always sticks out from the circle making it the best one to do the wall cheese with... almost like klei approves of it.

Walter, Wurt and Willow are my 3 favourite characters in that order. Both walter and willow have fantastic nomadic playstyles which is my favourite way to play. Wurt is my favourite when i want to go into more hardcore base building.

Hope Klei does their skilltrees justice 

[_zwb]

20 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Rush ruins with what gems tho? 

You get gems in the ruins. Unless your ruins generation is bugged, there should be enough gems for a couple star caller staves just from the statues. Ancient guardian could also drop some gems or even a star caller if you're lucky.

26 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

And its a pretty big singular niche to have as dfly has such good rewards that help so much in the early game and i feel like Willow has been cheated out of it.

You don't even need the furnace to survive winter, just burn trees and you'll be fine... Even if it is, BERNIE only saves you some ice staves staves, I don't see why killing dfly first autumn is somehow a Willow thing and the cheese got her "cheated out of it".

[Gashzer]

5 minutes ago, _zwb said:

You get gems in the ruins. Unless your ruins generation is bugged, there should be enough gems for a couple star caller staves just from the statues. Ancient guardian could also drop some gems or even a star caller if you're lucky.

Yeah killing dfly isnt required but it is much nicer to ruins rush knowing you dont really have to look for many gems. Gives you the option to loot thulecite from archives and rush straight to any ancient science station without needing to hang around for long.

8 minutes ago, _zwb said:

You don't even need the furnace to survive winter, just burn trees and you'll be fine... Even if it is, BERNIE only saves you some ice staves staves, I don't see why killing dfly first autumn is somehow a Willow thing and the cheese got her "cheated out of it".

You are acting like blue gems are super common. Digging graves is very much rng based. Regardless, having to deal with the larve without the cheese would make Willow a much more attractive option to play. Wolfgang or wanda players or any character really, if you recruit enough pigs could force dfly to drop a scale then you could craft scalemail to fight the larve with... yeah willow still wouldnt be the only character able to fight dfly. But she would be the most convenient to do so for both solo and teamplay. 

Pretty sure klei intended players to force dfly into submission for a scale. Retreat an craft scalemail then refight her and her larve properly afterwards. Clearly this didnt pan out too well because the ease of the wall cheese.

[_zwb]

29 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

You are acting like blue gems are super common. Digging graves is very much rng based.

It's a 15% chance, common enough considering how many graves are there to dig.

31 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Regardless, having to deal with the larve without the cheese would make Willow a much more attractive option to play.

Being able to fight an optional boss easier isn't going to make her mor attractive option to play. BERNIE is not so useful in day-to-day combat, I thit this is the main problem with Bernie.

Wendy can deal with a raid boss easily, but Abigail can also deal with all the regular mobs you meet everyday. Bernie can't do that(unless you're insane 24/7), that's why Wendy is still popular despite bee queen cheese exists. If Willow can summon BERNIE at will she'd be more popular.

[Gashzer]

32 minutes ago, _zwb said:

It's a 15% chance, common enough considering how many graves are there to dig.

For every 10 graves you get 1 blue gem with a 50% chance of getting 2. There might be at max 20 graves in the surface world. The odds arnt the best and you would be using up blue gems that could go into making snow chester or salt boxes.

35 minutes ago, _zwb said:

Being able to fight an optional boss easier isn't going to make her mor attractive option to play. 

Haha every single boss in DST is optional.. even deerclops and bearger you can just run from them. So its not worth mentioning that dfly is optional it has no impact on my point or any point for that matter. 

38 minutes ago, _zwb said:

BERNIE is not so useful in day-to-day combat, I thit this is the main problem with Bernie.

Wendy can deal with a raid boss easily, but Abigail can also deal with all the regular mobs you meet everyday. Bernie can't do that(unless you're insane 24/7), that's why Wendy is still popular despite bee queen cheese exists. If Willow can summon BERNIE at will she'd be more popular.

You literally just prove my point. Wendy has this fantastic ability to kill bee queen much much much easier than every other character. Dfly could have been Willows main boss to fight easier like bee queen is Wendy's. Bee queen cheeses are still much harder to setup than the wall cheese. The wall cheese for dfly is quite literally the easiest bug to pull off that any character benefits from.

The fact you said you cant use bernie for regular mobs shows me you have never even gave willow a try. Willows lighter allows her to cook mushrooms on the go, giving her full control of her sanity at will. Caves is full of blue and green mushrooms. Cooked monster meat can also force insanity and is easily obtained. Bernie with willow fighting alongside her can deal with hordes of nightmare creatures in the ruins that abigail cant and bernie can deal with every other mob horde that abigail can fight. Even assisting with the first 2 phases of bee queen before she starts screaming.

A wee bit of extra effort in gathering mushrooms and a sewing kit is a small price to pay to be able to deal with hordes of nightmare creatures (which are the hardest horde of mob to fight in the game, only woodie in moose form can also deal with them not even mighty wolfgang.)

Willow has full damage while wendy has 75%. All wendy players are shoehorned into beefalo taming like the sheep they are to get around this massive downside. Willow doesnt get shoehorned into any playstyle.

[_zwb]

21 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Willows lighter allows her to cook mushrooms on the go, giving her full control of her sanity at will.

That just shows Bernie is harder to control than Abigail, a simple right click is definitely needs less effort than gathering mushrooms regularly, but yes with some preparation you could summon BERNIE at any time, but Abigail is certainly easier to do.

32 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

The wall cheese for dfly is quite literally the easiest bug to pull off that any character benefits from.

You can just box yourself with walls and skip the whole larvae thing. This doesn't use any bug, if that's what you complain about, and it has the same effects as abusing path finding. Do these methods really take away anything from Willow? It's still very possible to fight dfly without walls and use Bernie, not like she'd enrage if a Willow fight her without walls.

You can fight dfly easily as Willow, but I'm not seeing anyone rushing dfly as her in the same manner people would rush bee queen as Wortox&Wormwood/Woodie. Why is that? Is the ability to kill dfly without gathering rocks or ice staves not appealing as you claim?

44 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Bernie with willow fighting alongside her can deal with hordes of nightmare creatures in the ruins that abigail cant

And Abigail can kill monkey/spider hordes but Bernie can't because it doesn't do AOE damage. Then what? Is Abigail bad simply because she can't fight Shadows? The same is true for Bernie, it's not bad just because it can't fight 20 spiders at once or something.

47 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

which are the hardest horde of mob to fight in the game, only woodie in moose form can also deal with them not even mighty wolfgang.)

Wanda can fight shadow hordes with proper speed boost like magiluminescence, Wormwood & Wortox can tank hordes of shadows easily with bramble husks.

doesn't matter though since hordes of shadows ain't that common.

[Random Guy000]

10 hours ago, Nnumber3 said:

Before the 5 willow mains hang me...

The council will decide your fate.

[Gashzer]

1 hour ago, _zwb said:

That just shows Bernie is harder to control than Abigail, a simple right click is definitely needs less effort than gathering mushrooms regularly, but yes with some preparation you could summon BERNIE at any time, but Abigail is certainly easier to do.

Bernie is abit harder to control but is a stronger follower because of it. Willow also doesnt have the 75% damage downside against any boss with AoE... Willows downsides are practically non-existent.

1 hour ago, _zwb said:

You can just box yourself with walls and skip the whole larvae thing. This doesn't use any bug, if that's what you complain about, and it has the same effects as abusing path finding. Do these methods really take away anything from Willow? It's still very possible to fight dfly without walls and use Bernie, not like she'd enrage if a Willow fight her without walls.

Wall box is more dangerous because you are locked in with dfly, shes not locked in with you. 

This makes escaping if things go south alot harder which balances the cheese abit. Altho walls for dfly in general 100% take away from the one and only character that is immune to fire against the boss who specializes in fire damage.

1 hour ago, _zwb said:

You can fight dfly easily as Willow, but I'm not seeing anyone rushing dfly as her in the same manner people would rush bee queen as Wortox&Wormwood/Woodie. Why is that? Is the ability to kill dfly without gathering rocks or ice staves not appealing as you claim?

Rush dfly as Willow or use the games easiest exploit? Hmmmmmm i wonder why no one uses willow for dfly..... is it the players fault for not using the easy to use bug or is it klei's fault for not removing the bug? Because you are making it sound like players are to blame for buggy gameplay.

1 hour ago, _zwb said:

 And Abigail can kill monkey/spider hordes but Bernie can't because it doesn't do AOE damage. Then what? Is Abigail bad simply because she can't fight Shadows? The same is true for Bernie, it's not bad just because it can't fight 20 spiders at once or something.

Bernie has AoE aggro which leads to the same results as Abigails AoE damage. All the Willow players need to do is hold F beside him... not a very difficult change in gameplay from Wendy tbh. Plus after a wee bit of effort to make a second bernie and sewing kit, bernie becomes much more reliable to revive in a fight. Rooks mess up abigail while bernie can tank a few hits from them and even if he dies you can instantly revive him or deploy a second bernie for full hp.

1 hour ago, _zwb said:

Wanda can fight shadow hordes with proper speed boost like magiluminescence, Wormwood & Wortox can tank hordes of shadows easily with bramble husks.

doesn't matter though since hordes of shadows ain't that common.

Yeah wanda can very dangerously kite them fair enough. A bramble husk however definitely doesnt do enough damage to a horde of nightmare creatures before either u die or about 3 bramble armours break. Even with a thulecite crown you will be losing more resources than you gain.

Hordes of shadows are in one of the most dangerous area in the entirety of DST... Willow is able to wreck all the shadows at the 4 nightmare lights around the completed ancient science station without needing to run away for 10mins. Abigail killing loads of weak spiders isnt a big accomplishment. Tanking shadows at the 4 nightmare lights is... and also provides plenty of nightmare fuel quickly for ruins gear.

[Well-met]

make her control the fires in a way that benefits survivors then. It's not that hard.

[Mysterious box]

The issue mainly comes from the fact people are afraid of fire becoming a bigger threat meaning a fire character will always be limited. Because fire isn't a major threat so being resistant to fire is niche at best and fire isn't welcomed in it's usage so having fire abilities ends up being a useless niche as well. It's the most telling that many people come up with fire perks for Willow that make her anti fire. For example making her better at putting them out or lowering their impact despite how at odds that kind of design is with her lore and character. When she burned down the orphanage I don't remember seeing a after credits scene where she magically put out all the fires and everyone inside was okay.  Her concept is at odds with how most people want to play the game so Kiel can't really be blamed for making her a teddymancer instead.

21 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Bernie is abit harder to control but is a stronger follower because of it. Willow also doesnt have the 75% damage downside against any boss with AoE... Willows downsides are practically non-existent.

This is more so a half truth a skilled Wendy player can bring Abigial to most any boss with proper control and potion management.

27 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Yeah wanda can very dangerously kite them fair enough.

Her whip's reach more or less removed all the danger as she can hit them before they enter striking range.

 

29 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Hordes of shadows are in one of the most dangerous area in the entirety of DST... Willow is able to wreck all the shadows at the 4 nightmare lights around the completed ancient science station without needing to run away for 10mins.

I would argue Woodie has the most relaxed time in this scenario speaking from experience. But even then not waiting for the phase to end isn't really worth a whole character pick.

[Gashzer]

27 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

The issue mainly comes from the fact people are afraid of fire becoming a bigger threat meaning a fire character will always be limited. Because fire isn't a major threat so being resistant to fire is niche at best and fire isn't welcomed in it's usage so having fire abilities ends up being a useless niche as well. It's the most telling that many people come up with fire perks for Willow that make her anti fire. For example making her better at putting them out or lowering their impact despite how at odds that kind of design is with her lore and character. When she burned down the orphanage I don't remember seeing a after credits scene where she magically put out all the fires and everyone inside was okay.  Her concept is at odds with how most people want to play the game so Kiel can't really be blamed for making her a teddymancer instead.

Yeah your right, for willow to gain more powerful fire skills she also needs to gain more anti-fire skills unfortunately. You could call it character development now that she has teamed up with the rest of survivors, Willow is willing not to burn them and their stuff even if she wants to.

27 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

 This is more so a half truth a skilled Wendy player can bring Abigial to most any boss with proper control and potion management.

Aye ive seen skilled wendy players do so. But i feel the extra management doesnt make it worth it to get around the damage downside for us non-wendy mains. Willow has better use of high tier shadow gear like dark swords, night armour, dreadstone armour. While an average-skilled Willows dps may not reach that of a high-skilled wendy player with abigail. Because of bernie the QoL of all other aspects of boss fights for the average-skilled Willow is nicer than what abigail can bring to an average-skilled wendy.

27 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Her whip's reach more or less removed all the danger as she can hit them before they enter striking range.

Welll until nightmare beaks push themselves into you faster lol...so weird that shadows have collision with themselves. They should combine into a super shadow tentacle monster when enough of them are close together

27 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

I would argue Woodie has the most relaxed time in this scenario speaking from experience. But even then not waiting for the phase to end isn't really worth a whole character pick.

Yeah woodie is great, its abit more pressure on your own personal skills controlling his charge ability tho. Not saying that fighting shadows that u can avoid is a reason to pick Willow, im just saying that bernie is a stronger and more versatile follower able to help in fighting clockwork bishop-rook pairs (if u have sewing kit) and shadow creatures that abigail cant do.

[Yuuko]

I disagree that Willow shouldn't have been included in DST.  She's had a journey trying to find her niche, but she is still loved by her fans.

Not every character needs to be OP.  Some can be more vanilla.  Willow was originally intended to be a more basic character like Wilson, and in a way she still is.  She has some toys, but nothing too extreme that it warps the game.  Largely she still gives the vanilla experience.  Nothing says this couldn't change, but nothing says it has to either.

I think the current skill set with Bernie gives her a lot of interesting interactions with his taunt allowing her to venture into places that would normally be much more risky, like farming shadow monkeys or nightmare lights.  Being able to have multiple Bernie and sewing kits restoring 100% of his health per use give him good staying power at lower upkeep then Abigail who requires potions to survive against some hordes.

You're not wrong that fire is a tough thing to design for in DST.  Its hard to make it useful and none of its current uses are really unique for Willow.  She could just get "magic fire" that isn't really fire with spells similar to Maxwell...  but idk...  What I like about Willow is her more rebellious, self sufficient, and chaotic nature.  These don't really require fire, although fire is an easy analogue to them hence the character archtype.  Something too controlled like magic fire wouldn't really hit the spot for me because its contrary to these aspects of her...  Neither would fire clean-up like ppl who suggest her torch can refuel by sucking in fires around her...

It might be too risky to give her fire based abilities without sacrificing the wild nature of fire which I'll agree makes fire abilities a sorta lose / lose for her.  I don't think she needs to be married to fire like she is though.  She could just get more insanity powers, and keep fire as just a thing she likes.

[_zwb]

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

Wall box is more dangerous because you are locked in with dfly, shes not locked in with you. 

This makes escaping if things go south alot harder which balances the cheese abit

Just use the pan flute and escape... There's literally no danger at all other than you skill issue yourself.

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

Rush dfly as Willow or use the games easiest exploit? Hmmmmmm i wonder why no one uses willow for dfly..... is it the players fault for not using the easy to use bug or is it klei's fault for not removing the bug? Because you are making it sound like players are to blame for buggy gameplay.

What I'm trying to say is the method is not as effective as the wall method. I'm not blaming players, I'm just showing the wall method is easier through players' choice between those 2.

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

Bernie has AoE aggro which leads to the same results as Abigails AoE damage.

Abigail can fight hordes of spider and take 0 damage, Bernie can't. Are those "same results"?

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

A bramble husk however definitely doesnt do enough damage to a horde of nightmare creatures before either u die or about 3 bramble armours break. Even with a thulecite crown you will be losing more resources than you gain.

You need 3 if you only use bramble husks, keep in mind that it's AOE, you can kill a lot of shadows really quickly if they group up. As for the cost, bramble husk is basically free when you have Wortox and Wormwood.

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

Abigail killing loads of weak spiders isnt a big accomplishment. Tanking shadows at the 4 nightmare lights is...

Accomplishment is far too vague for a proper discussion, let's not go done that way shall we?

[Mysterious box]

15 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Yeah your right, for willow to gain more powerful fire skills she also needs to gain more anti-fire skills unfortunately. You could call it character development now that she has teamed up with the rest of survivors, Willow is willing not to burn them and their stuff even if she wants to.

Problem is her quotes say otherwise unless they update them.

 

15 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Aye ive seen skilled wendy players do so. But i feel the extra management doesnt make it worth it to get around the damage downside for us non-wendy mains. Willow has better use of high tier shadow gear like dark swords, night armour, dreadstone armour. While an average-skilled Willows dps may not reach that of a high-skilled wendy player with abigail. Because of bernie the QoL of all other aspects of boss fights for the average-skilled Willow is nicer than what abigail can bring to an average-skilled wendy.

The thing is a player of average skill level is generally going to spend most of their time outside of boss battles so even in that scenario it's more advantageous to be Wendy.

 

19 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Welll until nightmare beaks push themselves into you faster lol...so weird that shadows have collision with themselves. They should combine into a super shadow tentacle monster when enough of them are close together

This would be a interesting idea honestly.

 

20 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Yeah woodie is great, its abit more pressure on your own personal skills controlling his charge ability tho. Not saying that fighting shadows that u can avoid is a reason to pick Willow, im just saying that bernie is a stronger and more versatile follower able to help in fighting clockwork bishop-rook pairs (if u have sewing kit) and shadow creatures that abigail cant do.

Honestly even if you screw up with the moose the damage reduction is no joke even if they all dog pile on you, your not going to die unless you keep letting it happen but I do get some people will panic in that situation. As for the Wendy situation it requires a bit more consideration on Wendy's side but it is possible to fight them with Abigial. I guess the bigger issue is Abigial is just consistently more useful than Bernie but this is more or less a common theme running through characters with similar niches even Webber, Wurt, and Maxwell are guilty of this problem it's why I wish Kiel would stop blending character perks together.

1 minute ago, _zwb said:

You need 3 if you only use bramble husks, keep in mind that it's AOE, you can kill a lot of shadows really quickly if they group up. As for the cost, bramble husk is basically free when you have Wortox and Wormwood.

heck you don't even need Wortox just a sieta lean and a tent is enough to fully negate the costs of living log production.

[_zwb]

6 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

heck you don't even need Wortox just a sieta lean and a tent is enough to fully negate the costs of living log production.

That's too slow, you have to stop playing the game and wait for your stats to go up. Quite a boring process but yes you don't even need a Wortox.

36 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

so weird that shadows have collision with themselves.

If they don't you'd be fighting 4 shadows standing on the same spot, good luck kiting that

[Mysterious box]

3 minutes ago, _zwb said:

That's too slow, you have to stop playing the game and wait for your stats to go up. Quite a boring process but yes you don't even need a Wortox.

I mean alternatively you could use healing salves from spider farming.

19 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

I disagree that Willow shouldn't have been included in DST.  She's had a journey trying to find her niche, but she is still loved by her fans.

Not every character needs to be OP.  Some can be more vanilla.  Willow was originally intended to be a more basic character like Wilson, and in a way she still is.  She has some toys, but nothing too extreme that it warps the game.  Largely she still gives the vanilla experience.  Nothing says this couldn't change, but nothing says it has to either.

I think the current skill set with Bernie gives her a lot of interesting interactions with his taunt allowing her to venture into places that would normally be much more risky, like farming shadow monkeys or nightmare lights.  Being able to have multiple Bernie and sewing kits restoring 100% of his health per use give him good staying power at lower upkeep then Abigail who requires potions to survive against some hordes.

You're not wrong that fire is a tough thing to design for in DST.  Its hard to make it useful and none of its current uses are really unique for Willow.  She could just get "magic fire" that isn't really fire with spells similar to Maxwell...  but idk...  What I like about Willow is her more rebellious, self sufficient, and chaotic nature.  These don't really require fire, although fire is an easy analogue to them hence the character archtype.  Something too controlled like magic fire wouldn't really hit the spot for me because its contrary to these aspects of her...  Neither would fire clean-up like ppl who suggest her torch can refuel by sucking in fires around her...

It might be too risky to give her fire based abilities without sacrificing the wild nature of fire which I'll agree makes fire abilities a sorta lose / lose for her.  I don't think she needs to be married to fire like she is though.  She could just get more insanity powers, and keep fire as just a thing she likes.

I think your missing the point it's not a case of Willow needs to be op it's that fire is her character she's listed as the fire starter and fire is a large part of her lore but it doesn't translate into the game beyond niche interactions. She can't even make use of inventory burning like she could in don't starve. What op more so meant is that her concept doesn't fit in dst so instead she's been turned into something she isn't while being presented as a fire character. It'd be like if Maxwell lost all of his abilities but he was just a bit more effective at collecting nightmare fuel and dealt more damage to shadow creatures while using party tricks to fight enemies.

On a side note I never really got the vanilla experience argument as even Wilson wasn't really vanilla the moment he got his beard even if you didn't use it for beard hair it clearly had a impact on winter and other insulation based mechanics.

[Yuuko]

20 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

I think your missing the point it's not a case of Willow needs to be op it's that fire is her character she's listed as the fire starter and fire is a large part of her lore but it doesn't translate into the game beyond niche interactions. She can't even make use of inventory burning like she could in don't starve. What op more so meant is that her concept doesn't fit in dst so instead she's been turned into something she isn't while being presented as a fire character. It'd be like if Maxwell lost all of his abilities but he was just a bit more effective at collecting nightmare fuel and dealt more damage to shadow creatures while using party tricks to fight enemies.

On a side note I never really got the vanilla experience argument as even Wilson wasn't really vanilla the moment he got his beard even if you didn't use it for beard hair it clearly had a impact on winter and other insulation based mechanics.

I don't think I'm missing the point at all.  Willow is tied to fire thematically because she is a chaotic, damaged girl who would rather see the world burn.  Nothing about this means she needs to have actual fire mechanics.  She can certainly want the world to burn but have non-fire based abilities.  Inventory fire was more like a bug then a feature, don't pretend that was a real thing lol  Might as well say Walter is good b/c he can voidwalk with Woby.

My point - which you definitely seemed to miss lol is that she doesn't have to stay tied to fire. She can still be a chaotic, damaged character who wants to see things on fire without actually needing to light them on fire for mechanical benefit.

[Mysterious box]

5 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Inventory fire was more like a bug then a feature, don't pretend that was a real thing

Was it ever confirmed to be a bug? I legitimately thought it was a intentional mechanic.

 

6 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Willow is tied to fire thematically because she is a chaotic, damaged girl who would rather see the world burn.

I feel like this is mostly just head cannon.

 

7 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Nothing about this means she needs to have actual fire mechanics.  She can certainly want the world to burn but have non-fire based abilities.

This is true but it can also apply to all the characters but when you pick a character referred to as the fire starter however you expect a character with fire abilities.  When you pick the strongman you expect abilities that place importantance on his strength and so on. I'm not saying those need to be those characters only focuses but Willow doesn't really live up to what her title implies.

[Yuuko]

17 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

I feel like this is mostly just head cannon.

This is true but it can also apply to all the characters but when you pick a character referred to as the fire starter however you expect a character with fire abilities.  When you pick the strongman you expect abilities that place importantance on his strength and so on. I'm not saying those need to be those characters only focuses but Willow doesn't really live up to what her title implies.

Nah, its a pretty standard archetype.  When you have a crazy little girl who is a bit unhinged and fatalistic fire is a natural association.  Fire being chaotic, uncontrollable, and damaging works as an analogy to their character.  This is much bigger then Willow or DST, its just thematic when crafting characters and stories.  Being called the firestarter doesn't literally mean you start fires.  It often refers to a person who is destructive and causing problems.

Nothing says they can't keep the fire as a thematic touch but ditch it as a real thing.  She can have her lighter and comment on how much she likes burning, gain sanity from flames etc but have other powers based around her sanity, being chaotic, spiteful, and a bit unhinged.  I think she would make a great chaos mage with powers effected by her sanity.

I think that is a much better direction then tamping down the destructive nature of fire in the game, turning it into a damage element instead of a force of nature, or giving Willow fire cleanup abilities.

[bagherthegamer]

Nah she's the poster girl of don't starve. The game wouldn't be the same without her.

Tho, i understand gow underwhelming she is currently. Freddofilms did a video on why she is the most random and forgotten charecter of don't starve. 

But that aside, people are talking about why fire powers are bad becuase they are too destructive to be useful so they need to tone them down for willow etc. 

But id argue the opposite, fire should be more destructive with her! They don't need to tone it down to make it useful, they just have to tone it up and leave it to the player to controll it. I mean fire death traps have existed for as long as dst, and the Community found a way to controll the fire in a way that its useful without being destructive. 

So aslong as we are given more tools to play with fire and make it stronger(like a gas baloon we can throw at enemies to make them covered in the stuff and take more fire dammage.) im sure the community will find a way to make it usefull and negate its downsides. 

[loopuleasa]

Forumites on their way to post the worst takes in existence.

[Guille6785]

On 9/4/2023 at 4:51 AM, Gashzer said:

If the wall cheese didnt exist for dragonfly, Willow and her immunity to fire would be 1000000x more useful as she would be one of the few characters able to easily solo her. 

willow is good for dfly because of bernie, not because of the fire immunity, because the only sources of fire damage in the dragonfly fight are standing near enraged dfly, touching lava ponds, getting a direct hit from a lavae or touching a lavae, none of which happen in a regular dfly fight with pan flute (the only source of fire damage you'd be tanking would be the fires created by lavae dying but that's only because they crowd together at bernie)

On 9/4/2023 at 4:51 AM, Gashzer said:

Immunity to klaus' fire spell boosts the amount of dps you can do to him.

the optimal way to dodge klaus's fire attack is to dodge diagonally behind him when it occurs, tanking the fire spell would let you get like 2 more hits in for the entire duration of the spell, it's pretty negligible

On 9/4/2023 at 4:51 AM, Gashzer said:

Lighting clockworks on fire with a torch and not having to worry about the fire damage is a nice enough perk... i would only do this tactic as willow.

this tactic is perfectly doable and consistent as any character