High Attack and Combat Experience

[CCCR33]

What does High Attack represent in the Battle of DST?

1 Less combat preparation time. Fewer equipment preparation, less preparation for recovery items, and faster acquisition of resources through battles

2 lower combat risk. Because of higher attack , shorter combat time, lower probability of encountering unexpected situations, and stronger ability to handle unexpected situations

3 more adaptable to survival. Death from creatures is an important cause of death, and high attack characters are more advantageous in dealing with battles, and for other survival factors, such as adaptability to harsh environments, the difference between characters is not as significant as the difference in attack power

New updates, highlighting the addition of content in the later stages of the game. Many of the new resources are aimed at killing monsters or obtaining them in areas with many monsters,

At this point, high attack power and strong combat ability will have more advantages

From this trend, for skill trees, characters without high attack should be given more combat ability choices to enhance the combat experience

 

[Cheggf]

If everyone is a combat character the combat characters will no longer be special and get outclassed (as already happened with Maxwell). If you think that combat is an important part of the game and you need a combat character to help you do it, just pick a combat character. Many people ignore combat entirely, either creating contraptions to kill what they need to kill or just not killing them in the first place.

[_zwb]

Planar damage sort of solved this problem, the higher damage dealt the more it gets absorbed. For example Wanda's alarming clock only deal half the damage against planar entity protection, while Wes will only do 3 less damage than base damage modifier character with a brightshade sword.

Then they bring this problem back by adding Wolfgang skill tree, giving him a lot of planar damage, he's best at combat again.

[Captain_Rage]

I think the point that is raised is that combat perks in practice means lots of saved resources and time because you get to unlock even better things with a minimal investment, which makes them more resource efficient than characters that are supposed to play out industrious in the long run.

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

I think the point that is raised is that combat perks in practice means lots of saved resources and time because you get to unlock even better things with a minimal investment, which makes them more resource efficient than characters that are supposed to play out industrious in the long run.

That is untrue.

[Gashzer]

Ok wolfgang with double damage cuts resources needed and time spent for boss fights and clearing the ruins. Damage saves time.

However you do not spend 90% of your time in combat in dst, you spend 90% of your time moving from A to B. Therefore Wx, Walter and to a lesser degree woodie, wormwood and wortox. Save time through travelling.  This means a Wx or walter can rapidly explore the map to gather marble for marble suits also saving in prep time for bosses. Movement speed also saves time.

Most of these characters also have much better secondary abilities or perks compared to wolfgang and wigfrid, the damage priority characters.

Wurt and webber have the mindset of huge prep for huge damage. In wurts case once you have made your merm guard huts her high dps becomes very cheap to maintain. Webber can gain more spiders/dps quicker than wurt but they require more upkeep in the long run if a spider dies here an there.

The roster is pretty diverse and every character saves time in their own way depending on what you consider important.

How much time do i save ? or does this character bring alot of QoL to my gaming experience? is the questions we must ask when choosing a main or considering how important or not important, damage or any other perk is.

Walter gives me a higher QoL and saves me more time than both the damage characters wolfgang and wigfrid. Just because you value damage doesnt mean increased damage is the most important trait. Different people value different things and other perks can save more time than raw damage in the long run.

[_zwb]

4 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

How much time do i save ?

Is it even possible to qualitatively measure the time players save with WX78 speed compared to Wolfgang 2x damage?

[Gashzer]

9 minutes ago, _zwb said:

Is it even possible to qualitatively measure the time players save with WX78 speed compared to Wolfgang 2x damage?

Well how many bosses can i kill in the first 40days or how big can i make my mega base in 40days. Any sort of speedrunning is probably the only way to tell the difference tbh.

But i remember catcoon person did a boss rush on youtube as wigfrid and saved so much time in prep because of not needing crockpots and crockpot foods for healing by using wigfrids healing song. That i believe they rushed bosses faster than they did wolfgang, this was a while back tho. People forget sometimes other factors can speed up general gameplay and prep.... wx's/walter's speed boosts definitely speed up preptime.

[_zwb]

5 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Any sort of speedrunning is probably the only way to tell the difference tbh.

I remembered OrangE once made a speedruning video, in it he said that Wx's is not actually that good because the time you spent on the ocean/carrying statues with beefalos makes his modules useless

[Gashzer]

7 minutes ago, _zwb said:

I remembered OrangE once made a speedruning video, in it he said that Wx's is not actually that good because the time you spent on the ocean/carrying statues with beefalos makes his modules useless

Did he keep the beefalo or just use it for statue carrying? Because personally i would saddle a beef to transport statues/altars then ditch them after. They 100% arnt worth taming as Wx unless you are using double beanboosters with an enlightened crown for more gestalt attacks but thats a niche loadout for him.

Edit: or triple super-processing if you are using ornery over rider.

Another reason why Walter and Woby are much better for saving time than you may think. 

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, _zwb said:

Is it even possible to qualitatively measure the time players save with WX78 speed compared to Wolfgang 2x damage?

You could make a mod that keeps track of how much time you spend moving without doing anything else, how much time you spend fighting, and how much time you spend gathering resources. Play as Wilson for awhile then look at the results and do some simple math. Or record your gameplay and manually make notes of the times. Although if you really wanted to be thorough you'd also need to factor in cheese contraptions.

Until someone does that and mathematically proves that damage bonuses are better than speed bonuses I'm going to stay steadfast in my belief that damage bonuses are only the best bonus if you only like fighting. But that is obvious, and someone who likes fighting should just pick the fighting characters. Literally made for them.

[Captain_Rage]

But now you are talking about speed run optimization and not long term resource efficiency during general play.

The number of Nightmare Fuel required to beat Misery Toadstool using Dark Swords as Wes versus as Wigfrid:

(99999/(0.75*6800))*5 = 98 versus (99999/(1.25*6800))*5=58. This is one example and they tend to add up.

 

If you can defeat the Celestial Champion easily before most of the other characters and with a minimal resource investment on top of that it will save you the time of procuring Cooked Cacti / sanity restoring items after that point since the Enlightened Crown restores sanity passively, does not break and is so potent. This assumes that managing / restoring sanity is mandatory mechanic and handled by eating Cooked Cacti, which we know is not necessarily true, but with enough of such chores everything adds up.

After obtaining the Enlightened Crown and the Umbralla both sanity management and weather challenges for almost every season become super lenient since said items provide top tier protection with minimal maintenance.

On the other hand, most bosses do not grant rewards that nullify threats almost completely. Agreed.

[Gashzer]

35 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

But now you are talking about speed run optimization and not long term resource efficiency during general play.

The number of Nightmare Fuel required to beat Misery Toadstool using Dark Swords as Wes versus as Wigfrid:

(99999/(0.75*6800))*5 = 98 versus (99999/(1.25*6800))*5=58. This is one example and they tend to add up.

 

 

Wes is more efficient using weapons to cancel out his 0.75 damage multiplier tho. Hes near the same efficiency as 1x damage characters. Add planar weapons and he becomes more efficient than 1x damage and maybe even wigfrid. Too lazy to do the maths tho

Edit: fine ill do maths. 

Nightmare fuel for wes: (99999/(0.75*6800*1.33))*5 = 74 rounded up

Brightshade sword wes does 58.5 with 266 uses, wigfrid does 77.5 with 200 uses.

Wes: (99999/(58.5*266)) = 7 swords need to kill misery

Wigfrid (99999/(77.5*200)) = 7 swords too

Wes is as good as wigfrid for killing misery

Wes op hahaha

Tbh i think all characters take 7-8 swords to kill misery, i really like planar balancing out even the weak dps characters for prep.

[Cheggf]

14 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

But now you are talking about speed run optimization and not long term resource efficiency during general play.

The number of Nightmare Fuel required to beat Misery Toadstool using Dark Swords as Wes versus as Wigfrid:

(99999/(0.75*6800))*5 = 98 versus (99999/(1.25*6800))*5=58. This is one example and they tend to add up.

You're using misery toadstool as an example because he is health bloat. Health bloat that nobody actually fights. Health bloat that especially nobody fights with dark swords. Use a hambat or morning star, like you'd be doing as Wolfgang anyways. 

16 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

If you can defeat the Celestial Champion easily before most of the other characters and with a minimal resource investment on top of that it will save you the time of procuring Cooked Cacti / sanity restoring items after that point since the Enlightened Crown restores sanity passively, does not break and is so potent. This assumes that managing / restoring sanity is mandatory mechanic and handled by eating Cooked Cacti, which we know is not necessarily true, but with enough of such chores everything adds up.

After obtaining the Enlightened Crown and the Umbralla both sanity management and weather challenges for almost every season become super lenient since said items provide top tier protection with minimal maintenance.

On the other hand, most bosses do not grant rewards that nullify threats almost completely. Agreed.

I almost exclusively use sanity food during boss fights, which the crown is far from being able to keep up with so it doesn't do anything. Tam's 6.7 is already more than enough to counter passive drain.

[Guille6785]

2 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

But now you are talking about speed run optimization and not long term resource efficiency during general play.

The number of Nightmare Fuel required to beat Misery Toadstool using Dark Swords as Wes versus as Wigfrid:

(99999/(0.75*6800))*5 = 98 versus (99999/(1.25*6800))*5=58. This is one example and they tend to add up.

 

If you can defeat the Celestial Champion easily before most of the other characters and with a minimal resource investment on top of that it will save you the time of procuring Cooked Cacti / sanity restoring items after that point since the Enlightened Crown restores sanity passively, does not break and is so potent. This assumes that managing / restoring sanity is mandatory mechanic and handled by eating Cooked Cacti, which we know is not necessarily true, but with enough of such chores everything adds up.

After obtaining the Enlightened Crown and the Umbralla both sanity management and weather challenges for almost every season become super lenient since said items provide top tier protection with minimal maintenance.

On the other hand, most bosses do not grant rewards that nullify threats almost completely. Agreed.

maybe the key takeaway here is that people should stop pretending they're some sort of TAS level speedrunners and just play the characters they enjoy instead of pretending there's an imaginary balance problem in a game with no explicit objectives

[Copyafriend]

Honestly to me at least, the main benefits of combat characters is actually damage breakthroughs, like killing a spider in 1 hit, or 3 shotting nightmares. Wigfrid’s main benefit in my eyes is the damage reduction making armors and healing more easily managed.

as for movement speed bonus characters, i think it comes down to how much upkeep they take/convenience to use vs how early they can be acquired.

wx78 is obviously the fastest character with no competition, but if you want to be as fast as wx can be you need to use a walking cane and a magi and follow the roads, so its kind of annoying to use if you want to play more casually, besides i prefer just turning winter/summer off over being hyper fast.
 

walter (woby) is super convenient early game, but falls off past the first year as it becomes more and more likely that you went ahead and tamed a beef. But having that extra storage and a convenient massive speedboost is very cool in the early days.

woodie has arguably the best exploration perk in the goose, but it stops everything else you could be doing, you cant even gather until you are done. But you can get so much exploration done even over water that its not even funny. But if you’re not A: exploring or B: running over water…

its kind of annoying to use, and you end up sitting for a mildly annoying amount of time waiting to detransform.

Wortox might end up spending more time farming souls that how much time he saves by teleporting

and wanda has the most expensive teleport system in the game, while simultaneously being the best.

 

 And of course we cant avoid talking about the elephant (or rather cow) in the room.

beefaloes kind of inevitably outclass most personal movement skills that don’t involve teleportation. They’re just too convenient. You can have them follow you or wait somewhere for you, they have no upkeep once tamed, and are faster than 95% of the characterbase, and the other 5% needs a full cane magi speedboost AND cobblestone to beat it.

i think they’re great but they kind of ruin the whole “exploration” discussion because the trump card of “yeah i just tame a beefalo” is always there and totally fair.

 

[lenship2]

18 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

Wigfrid’s main benefit in my eyes is the damage reduction making armors and healing more easily managed.

wigfrid has 267 effective health against all damage sources btw (higher than wurt with merm king)

[Mr Giggio]

16 hours ago, Cheggf said:

as already happened with Maxwell

huh? :V

[abrocator]

There are two real choices

1. Stick with rewarding combat and just accept that some characters will be be objectively better. Players are already mostly fine with the fact that some characters are better. Most of the controversy are around characters who are “bad”. But being just good in a fun niche is often fine.
2. Implement a game design where other playstyles are viable by allowing you to achieve goals through multiple means. This would mean that you can use your “charisma” skill to... I dunno convince Deerclops to give you her eyeball.

The fake/lame choice is to flatten progression using planar damage.

[Jakepeng99]

On 9/8/2023 at 1:41 PM, Gashzer said:

Did he keep the beefalo or just use it for statue carrying? Because personally i would saddle a beef to transport statues/altars then ditch them after. They 100% arnt worth taming as Wx unless you are using double beanboosters with an enlightened crown for more gestalt attacks but thats a niche loadout for him.

Edit: or triple super-processing if you are using ornery over rider.

Another reason why Walter and Woby are much better for saving time than you may think. 

I mean untamed beefalos are still good and much faster than normal.

On 9/8/2023 at 7:57 PM, lenship2 said:

wigfrid has 267 effective health against all damage sources btw (higher than wurt with merm king)

Isn't 200 × 1.25 = 250?

[Picklesaurus]

26 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Isn't 200 × 1.25 = 250?

200÷0,75 =  266,66...
25% less damage taken = effectively 33% more hp than a character without inate damage resistance, which also means healing from any source is 33% more effective on Wigfrid.

[Cheggf]

5 hours ago, Picklesaurus said:

200÷0,75 =  266,66...
25% less damage taken = effectively 33% more hp than a character without inate damage resistance, which also means healing from any source is 33% more effective on Wigfrid.

This mistake is so common that it's a coin flip on whether professional game development studios make the error or not in their wording. It took Age of Empires like 20 years before they fixed the phrasing of their civ bonuses.