Revisiting wormwood skill tree

[Rouanet]

As a wormwood main, I'm happy our plant has a skill tree, but it feels unimpressive at best, specially when it comes to the crafting department with other characters having more options. Starting the path with a mandatory seed matches the concept perfectly, but after that the skills are just kind of there.

Right-branch: photosynthesis should be the most op version of blooming, but it only heals 24 hp/day when next to a dwarf star, which is only 6 rot. Reducing the healing cooldown to 10 or 15 seconds would increase the value to 48 or 36 hp/day which would be way more useful without being broken.

Top right-branch: skilled self-fertilizer could make compost wraps heal more and bloom for a longer period, quickening the animation doesn't feel like much for a whole insight point.

Bramble trap and bramble husk specialist should make it so wormwood and his allies don't take any damage from its activation, even without wearing the husk. A nice bonus would be granting the passive effect of harvesting cacti and spiny twigs permanent for wormwood.

Left-branch: now to the crafting part. Sapling crafting could also include grass tufts to have the two basic resources of the game. Berry bush and juicy berry bush crafting could be united into a single skill. Monkeytail crafting could include banana bushes, and for the empty space left after uniting the berry bushes, crafting stone fruit bushes would be a great addition.

Top left-branch: I honestly feel like the mushroom path is the one that doesn't need any tweaking, feels great as it is right now.

Affinity: the only real problem lies with brightshade equipment not being easily accessible while dark swords and night armors are very easy to craft, specially if wormwood picks the monkeytail crafting to make all the papyrus needed.

Would these changes make wormwood broken? Is the skill tree good as it is now? Really curious about the opinions of other wormwood players

[ShadowbirdRH]

I don't find anything you suggest particularly objectionable, but I do have a lot of my own input on Wormwood's skill tree.

I've been mentioning Wormwood getting plant cultivation abilities for a long while prior to the release of his skill tree, and I'm fairly underwhelmed by what we got. It's kinda ranty, so I'm leaving it for the end.

Since a number of abilities rely on Wormwood blooming, it would seem to me that abilities like Bramble Trap mastery would be grouped with the other blooming abilities. I thought Bramble Mastery already did protect Wormwood, allies, and walls from the AoE damage of the traps and husks, I'll have to look into that, but it would be nicer still if they could avoid non-hostile entities too. BTW, bramble husks were already the best way to deal with giant tentacles, but with the improvement that releases a spike every third attack, it's become unbeatable against them. You can reliably take them out without taking a single hit in the process.

A lot of points go toward improving mushroom planters, and a significant ability is locked behind all the improvements. Kinda frustrating that it's set up that way. I don't need my planters to produce faster, or more. If I want more, I can just make more. The big improvements are being able to grow moon shrooms, and producing sleeping spores upon eating them, but I need to burn three points on talents that I consider worthless in order to get to it.

I know the petal production skill got a lot of flak before it was replaced with photosynthesis, but I was among those who saw its true potential. Among various other applications, the petals could be allowed to rot, being able to restore 4hp each, or used with tillweeds to produce tillweed salve for much more effective healing than that waste of space they replaced it with could ever yield.

Being able to metamorphose plants into minions seems weird and off for Wormwood. Just my opinion, but I'd rather he be able to befriend naturally existing plant creatures, including grass gators and tree guards, though stronger creatures would require higher level offerings. Never bothered with the Lunar Guardian skills, seems to OP to be fun, also too specific, that they're trying too hard to validate the brightshade equipment.

Lunar sapling crafting is massively underwhelming, especially since saplings, regardless of variant, are largely indestructible outside of fire, or IIRC digging them while stunted by summer heat, as opposed to grass tufts which in addition to needing periodic fertilization after transplanting, can become grass geckos, which can then be killed. I also strongly agree about combining the berry bush crafting. Unless your world has juicy berry bushes, the first berry bush crafting is completely useless until you get the second one; their inter-reliance demands they go together. There's a lot of non-renewable plants (outside of spontaneous regrowth, which feels like a crutch and a compromise to Don't Starve's mechanics if you ask me) that are left out of Wormwood's propagation abilities. Rather than producing the actual uprooted plant, I think Wormwood should be able to craft starts, which can be planted and will over a few days grow into the plant in question, free from any need to periodically fertilize unless dug up later.

• Tier zero, naturally available: lumpy evergreens, thorny bushes, spiky trees, cost 10hp and 1 rot.
• Tier one: grass tufts (requires 5 cut grass), saplings (requires 5 twigs), lunar saplings (requires 5 twigs and 1 lunar petals), 30hp and 1 compost
• Tier two: berry bushes of any kind (5 of any kind of berry), mushrooms (relevant spore), 50hp and 1 compost wrap
• Tier three: Mushtrees (relevant funcap for RGB, 6 moon shrooms for lunar, living log, toadwort (Wormwood to be able to craft 10 of these from 1 shroom skin)), Light flowers, single bulb variant only (10 lightbulbs, 1 toadwort, at least 1 light flower within two tiles), Cacti (5 cactus flesh, 5 cactus flowers, at least 1 cactus within two tiles), Reeds (5 cut reeds, 1 tentacle spots, 1 reeds or monkey tails within two tiles) 80hp and 1 tree jam.

I'm not into the idea of being able to craft monkey tails. I feel it compromises exploration, that those are suppose to be a unique reward/incentive for finding the moon quay island and dealing with its inhabitants. Maybe crafting lureplants could be axed too. In return, Wormwood could start the game with one. Also, replace that skill with being able to craft snaptooth seedlings, the flytraps from Hamlet, using a fleshy bulb as a material, together with 50HP and a compost wrap.

 

[arubaro]

i don't mind the right brach but the left one is kinda awful. 

lightbugs not matching your speed makes them pointless and they get stuck in the caves, not worth wasting HP for such bad light source

saladmanders consume a lot of hp and cant think about a fight were i want to use them

[EatenCheetos]

I fully support wormwood buff

[Dr.Webber]

I get why they didn’t do it but I think it would be cool if they explored the route of him going against his lunar roots replacing lunar Guardian it would be a shadow reflection of lunar cultivator 

maybe shadow turncoat honestly I don’t have a good name for so if you got a better one I’m open ears

[Almoboi]

Agreed with what's been said here for the most part

my major issues currently lie with:
- Light bugs need to traverse the caves void and not get stuck, also they need more HP.
- lack of predictable behaviour of saladmanders and the lack of their heated form.
- The berry bush skills being separate even though they're co-dependant (Berry bush skill alone is useless if you don't have juicy berries in your world) which defeats the purpose of the branch.
- Lack of Banana bush craft considering it's his favourite food and he's the plant provider (the craft should be expensive costing 5 bananas and both berry bush types for example, ofc the would be a skill you can't get without unlocking the berry bush skill)
- Shade plant being a filler skill rather than a build-based one (as it's arguably more niche than bee kind) , another alternative could be a further increase in his walking speed of 5% or 10% when fully bloomed.


an extra thing that's not necessary but would make this skill a lot more fun and engaging is training carrats by giving them a specific item to gather, and if possible making carrats customizable via feeding them seeds (year of the carrat skins), this would also heal them.