Skill Spotlight: Wigfrid and Willow (Available Now!)

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, arubaro said:

Funny that you wanted offscreen global wildfires to later rollback because you lose a decorative item for your own mistake xD

I think your missing the bigger issue here, this is a skill that Willow Players will spawn into the world with access to on Day 1 that only requires 2 small bees to die in a fire and then she can place a fireball dot in the middle of your stuff that lasts for an entire game day.

Yeah yeah yeah people can get a dwarf star or whatever but by the time they do that… it’s a LATE GAME Item.

if you’d like though I’ll go out and buy a Pc then join your world Day 1 randomly dropping tiny balls of fire everywhere in your forests, in your base, on your Christmas trees- then I’ll laugh as chaos ensues as you continuously try to put out the smouldering Ball of Light.

Not even Willows own magical lighter can suck this thing back up, once it’s there, it’s just There.. for a Whole Day.

Maybe.. it needs tweaking yeah?

[Yuuko]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I think your missing the bigger issue here, this is a skill that Willow Players will spawn into the world with access to on Day 1 that only requires 2 small bees to die in a fire and then she can place a fireball dot in the middle of your stuff that lasts for an entire game day.

Yeah yeah yeah people can get a dwarf star or whatever but by the time they do that… it’s a LATE GAME Item.

if you’d like though I’ll go out and buy a Pc then join your world Day 1 randomly dropping tiny balls of fire everywhere in your forests, in your base, on your Christmas trees- then I’ll laugh as chaos ensues as you continuously try to put out the smouldering Ball of Light.

Not even Willows own magical lighter can suck this thing back up, once it’s there, it’s just There.. for a Whole Day.

Maybe.. it needs tweaking yeah?

First off - there are a lot of ways you can torch a base, starting with a torch.  Nothing about the fireball is really detrimental.

Secondly - I really do not think we need to balance the game around "but what if griefer..."

Thirdly - as answered before - the fireball generating standard, spreadable flames is intended.  You didn't know, but like many things in DST its only dangerous when you don't know.  Now you do, it should not be a danger going forward.

Note that non-Willow characters now have more access to spreadable flames then she does.

[grm9]

8 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

it’s a LATE GAME Item

no, you can probably get it in one day as wormwood if you go to ruins with lightbugs and find the statues with the needed gems quickly enough 

8 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

you continuously try to put out the smouldering Ball of Light

the base sitter gardener will probably just spam watering can to extinguish stuff until that thing disappears or hammer it and rebuild it further away or rollback or haunt it as a ghost if they copied the star caller staff's code, which's star gets extinguished if you haunt it 

Edited December 31, 2023 by grm9

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

... or haunt it as a ghost if they copied the star caller staff's code, which's star gets extinguished if you haunt it 

I've seen people mention this with some uncertainty...

Yes you can haunt it to put it out exactly like a dwarf star.

Edited December 31, 2023 by Yuuko

[Jakepeng99]

On 12/31/2023 at 1:51 AM, Mike23Ua said:

I think your missing the bigger issue here, this is a skill that Willow Players will spawn into the world with access to on Day 1 that only requires 2 small bees to die in a fire and then she can place a fireball dot in the middle of your stuff that lasts for an entire game day.

Yeah yeah yeah people can get a dwarf star or whatever but by the time they do that… it’s a LATE GAME Item.

if you’d like though I’ll go out and buy a Pc then join your world Day 1 randomly dropping tiny balls of fire everywhere in your forests, in your base, on your Christmas trees- then I’ll laugh as chaos ensues as you continuously try to put out the smouldering Ball of Light.

Not even Willows own magical lighter can suck this thing back up, once it’s there, it’s just There.. for a Whole Day.

Maybe.. it needs tweaking yeah?

Not an issue.

[BB Marioni]

why would I pick a Willow to use fireball if I wanted to burn bases, I would pick literally anyone else and craft a torch

[Kwaik]

Is there any remotely reliable way to target Wendy's spells at enemies when using a controller? 

 

Or are they completely useless 

[Mike23Ua]

On 1/1/2024 at 8:23 AM, BB Marioni said:

why would I pick a Willow to use fireball if I wanted to burn bases, I would pick literally anyone else and craft a torch

You get kicked from the game and the host rolls the world back like nothing ever happened.

But a smart Griefer will drop a pretty little fireball somewhere without telling you, so even if you DID roll the world back and kick them from the game, guess what?

That Fireballs still gonna be there and had been doing it’s job.

It’s really dumb that this thing can’t be extinguished by sucking it back up into her lighter, or by just smacking it with a spear or something.

Plus- if I was a Griefer burning your base is quick and doesn’t give me the same satisfaction as watching you continuously try to put out the smoldering for an entire game day.

[Yuuko]

10 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

You get kicked from the game and the host rolls the world back like nothing ever happened.

But a smart Griefer will drop a pretty little fireball somewhere without telling you, so even if you DID roll the world back and kick them from the game, guess what?

That Fireballs still gonna be there and had been doing it’s job.

It’s really dumb that this thing can’t be extinguished by sucking it back up into her lighter, or by just smacking it with a spear or something.

Plus- if I was a Griefer burning your base is quick and doesn’t give me the same satisfaction as watching you continuously try to put out the smoldering for an entire game day.

Nah, the smart griefers were the ones that forced Klei to re-design spawn to prevent 100% path blocking.  I think spawn death is still a thing though.  Leaving stacks of cursed trinkets and your skeleton at spawn is pretty gnarly and can still be done.

I don't see how using a torch to light something and putting a fireball are any different.  If they see it, then they see it.  They can kick you and roll back as easily as if you lit it with a torch.  I think you're building a strawman out of the boogieman-griefer b/c you accidentally burned part of your base b/c you didn't realize how the mechanic worked.  My buddy was trying out Willow for their first time and put a fireball down next to a row of freshly planted kelp and torched them all lol.  Things happen - part of being a survivalist is rolling with the punches.  Part of being a gamer is learning from your mistakes.  Hopefully you won't accidentally set fire to anything with fireball going forward ^_~

Edited January 3 by Yuuko

[Crowdingboar]

They should add a skill tree to WX, yes they recently did a rework for him but adding extra circuits and circuit slots would be very useful 

[Kwaik]

Did they patch you being able to carry multiple stacks of embers? 

 

Im pretty sure I was able to carry multiple stacks yesterday and tonight I was definitely limited to 1. 

 

Just odd to see a Wednesday patch on Xbox 

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, Kwaik said:

Did they patch you being able to carry multiple stacks of embers? 

 

Im pretty sure I was able to carry multiple stacks yesterday and tonight I was definitely limited to 1. 

 

Just odd to see a Wednesday patch on Xbox 

You can still carry multiple stacks - BUT you can only have them in Willow's own inventory.  They cannot take any slots in a backpack.  I believe these are the same rules as Wortox' souls.

[BB Marioni]

On 1/3/2024 at 12:29 PM, Mike23Ua said:

You get kicked from the game and the host rolls the world back like nothing ever happened.

But a smart Griefer will drop a pretty little fireball somewhere without telling you, so even if you DID roll the world back and kick them from the game, guess what?

That Fireballs still gonna be there and had been doing it’s job.

It’s really dumb that this thing can’t be extinguished by sucking it back up into her lighter, or by just smacking it with a spear or something.

Plus- if I was a Griefer burning your base is quick and doesn’t give me the same satisfaction as watching you continuously try to put out the smoldering for an entire game day.

You know you can roll back for more than a day right? and fireball lasts only a day.
The mechanics of this game has never been made to be griefer-proof. The fact about DST since before is that, if you join a public server, you already accept the risks. There are hundreds of ways to grief the game.

[Mike23Ua]

7 minutes ago, BB Marioni said:

You know you can roll back for more than a day right? and fireball lasts only a day.
The mechanics of this game has never been made to be griefer-proof. The fact about DST since before is that, if you join a public server, you already accept the risks. There are hundreds of ways to grief the game.

Yeah about that.. playing DST on Xbox Series X/S the game runs faster than Klei Intended for it ever to be able to, so what ends up happening is that your World only rolls back to the last available save, to roll back more consecutive days you have to actually close the server, return to the main menu and roll back for 1-5 days in the world generation menu.

Otherwise- No matter how many times you press the rollback button, it only rolls back one day.

I can’t report it as a Glitch or a Bug because DST wasn’t designed FOR Xbox Series X/S… it’s just a major inconvenience to people playing ON a Series X or S.

It gets WORSE when you play with people who are still on Xbox One…

on the X/S you’ll load into the game a Full 60 seconds before someone on Xbox One will.

which Means.. if the host of the world is on an Xbox One and your playing on Series X/S and THEY try to roll their world back it will Fail because while they’re still taking that full minute to load into the game, YOU have already been in the world moving about and active so the game saves a New Restore point.

But since it’s not a Bug, or a Glitch… I can’t really report it..

Its more of the Technical Limitations of last Gen hardware beginning to show their age.

I feel like At this point- Klei should just start making a next Gen DS game & abandon the older hardware.

But that’s just my opinion.

[Yuuko]

17 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

on the X/S you’ll load into the game a Full 60 seconds before someone on Xbox One will.

 

You need to use it fast enough on pc too.  You only get a few seconds and it can feel inconsistent as sometimes I've accidentally backed up a second time when I only meant to restore to the first one. 

About loading in times - if the first person pauses the game then everyone else can load in, and then you unpause it to start playing.  PC also have loading times that vary depending on connection, pc specs, etc.  These things are not unique to the x-box, and not really something Klei can "fix" as they are just a fact about the world.  Faster systems load faster...

Edited January 4 by Yuuko

[Kwaik]

3 hours ago, Yuuko said:

You can still carry multiple stacks - BUT you can only have them in Willow's own inventory.  They cannot take any slots in a backpack.  I believe these are the same rules as Wortox' souls.

Ahh I bet it was the backpack thing I didn't realize 

 

Never bought wortox so I didn't know the mechanic

[The_Deadringer]

When does this Update come for PS4, Xbox, and Switch? Does it all have a different release date?

[Mike23Ua]

6 minutes ago, The_Deadringer said:

When does this Update come for PS4, Xbox, and Switch? Does it all have a different release date?

It’s already been out for quite awhile on both Xbox & PS4, but the switch version usually is an update or two behind other platforms before catching back up.

[Kwaik]

What's people's opinions on building out Willow's skill tree atm? 

Lunar fire seems to be the strongest, albeit a little clunky (more so on console) with a fairly long cooldown 

Burning Bernie seems easiest to use and very practical, but limits you on other skills. 

How much am I losing out of I don't take Bernies affinity skill?  Potentially having burning Bernie and a maxed out combustion? 

[-Variant]

18 minutes ago, Kwaik said:

Burning Bernie seems easiest to use and very practical, but limits you on other skills. 

How much am I losing out of I don't take Bernies affinity skill?  Potentially having burning Bernie and a maxed out combustion? 

Others may disagree, but I just tried to do a Bernie based tree and I didn't have much fun with it at all. Mainly the fact that Burning Bernie is so absurdly expensive.
If you want it, you need like almost all of his skills since choosing an Alignment skill for him doesn't actually count.
It also felt kind of situational. Like, it was fun, but it feels like it lasts a little too short and is way too costly for my tastes.

I ususally try to split mine. I get Bearly Sane, Hot headed, and the health upgrades for Bernie and then I get most of the casts for Willow. Except Burning Frenzy. Can't stand Burning Frenzy.

23 minutes ago, Kwaik said:

Lunar fire seems to be the strongest, albeit a little clunky (more so on console) with a fairly long cooldown 

 

I don't know anyone's who voted for the Shadow skill. It might be better on consoles but I don't know for certain. I always go for lunar.

[Yuuko]

5 hours ago, Kwaik said:

What's people's opinions on building out Willow's skill tree atm? 

Lunar fire seems to be the strongest, albeit a little clunky (more so on console) with a fairly long cooldown 

Burning Bernie seems easiest to use and very practical, but limits you on other skills. 

How much am I losing out of I don't take Bernies affinity skill?  Potentially having burning Bernie and a maxed out combustion? 

From my experience you can easily get by with literally FULL lighter skills + lighter affinity and 4 bernie skills.  Put them in sanity 1, 2, hot headed, and any other thing.

Sanity 1 allows Bernie to grow in low lunacy just like low sanity so you can use him on lunar island etc.  Hot headed means he'll aggro aligned monsters which includes the Moonblind Crow and Misshapen Bird.  I've found Bernie alone can hold off all of the lunar birds while I deal only with giving Wag his tools.

Now from there you can dial back 3 skills from the lighter tree to get alignment bernie.  This gives him more tankiness but ONLY against bigger hits.  He'll still get shredded by shadow monkeys and other small hits, but rooks, bishops, bosses etc he'll be more tanky.  I normally take this but *only* for the appearance.  Lunar Ashley and Bernie look really cool lol

The lighter skills I normally dial back are 2 for lighter brightness and fire fighter.

The brightness isn't really important for me.  While exploring in the ruins I get night vision goggles for best visibility and exploring anywhere else is safe enough with a small light radius.  If I need light for a task it is very easy to light something up wherever I am.  The bait station is a great pre-fab you can carry with you to put down and burn if you ever need heat / light since you get 100% materials back if you hammer it, even if it burns all the way.  I use these for heating up while traveling if there isn't anything else to burn.

Fire fighter damage is really negligible imo.  Yes with fire fighter you can reliably kill bees and spiders with only combustion but tbh I don't find that very efficient.  I just drop bernie so he takes aggro from bees / spiders and I go through 1 by 1 killing them the old fashion way.  1 swing with a torch, and as many more with a weapon as needed to kill.  This way the embers aren't all spread out either.  Early game I'll just use my torch to attack them.  I prefer bees to spiders b/c there are 6 bees in a hive I can get at all at once.  You can also light the hive on fire, then attack a bee and extinguish the hive to preserve its health while accessing bees at any time.

imo Burning Bernie is a bit of a meme.  All of those points and he's basically a knock-off Abigail.  Compared to Abi in optimal conditions Bernie's damage is lower, he is less tanky, and he doesn't auto-heal.  This is three bad strikes against him.  Abi at least deals a basic continual rate of damage that is okay but Bernie only swings every 2 seconds against a single target - IF he's not doing his taunt dance.  The burning skill only returns another 50 each time he is hit.  Bernie isn't bad against bosses b/c of the planar trait but the dps is so slow it really isn't worth it, and against smaller mobs he'll get shredded.  Abi's shield that blocks 100% damage from hits within a certain window makes her faaar tankier against mass mobs.  Abi heals on her own even when unsummoned but Bernie is just stuck there...  One of my BIGGEST asks with her rework in beta was to get a way to at least actively heal him while he's out with embers or something but eh...  He's pretty doomed tbh.  Even if you wanted to use him, you'd just pick Wendy and be better all around.

Edit - I forgot to talk about shadow vs lunar affinity skills.  I think lunar fire is nice to help clear things like hounds, shadow / pirate monkeys, and ads like the eyeballs, grumbles, lavae, etc.  The dps is pretty bad, and the cooldown makes it even worse.

You CAN kill Bee Queen with it in a reasonable amount of time b/c even with its cd the damage uptime is pretty good considering it keeps grumbles off and damages her - while you'll be spending a bit of time just walking around waiting on cooldowns to clear...  it does work.

It is GREAT at the tattered trio.  Its not hard to kite them into hitting all 3 of them at once while still being able to dodge their attacks, and unlike the shadow pieces they don't reset when one dies so you can quickly clear them for full reward.

Aside from them I find it to be worthless in most boss fights - especially AFW b/c its aiming is so bad, it gets cancelled by bone prison, or getting hit, it costs too much, and aiming is sooo baaad.

Shadow is an option.  You can use it for a bit of burst to help get a stun / scale on dfly.  Against bosses where you have to run around a bit, and there aren't many other things on screen its alright like AG, NMWP, Toad, etc.  Mostly its kinda a "might as well" skill during those fights.  It doesn't do anything particularly interesting but you do get a bit of extra damage which is alright I guess.  Cost is still very high though!

Edited January 9 by Yuuko

[Mike23Ua]

For Xbox if you play as Willow some things I have noticed is that your Defiantly going to need most of willows lighter perks (you can maybe skip the extra brightness) but you NEED that longer burn time duration on enemy mobs, because switching between Weapons/Canes/Lighter/Torch can & often DOES mess up your Inventory- And if you have to spend more time scrolling through your inventory then KB+Mouses Magical Godlike Button Binding- Then the things you set on fire can actually Stop being on Fire by the time you attack them. Which means.. You Waste Torch/Lighter Duration if your trying to farm Embers.

For me personally I just went with full lighter perks and then I go punch a bunch of Bee Hives to get like 50 bees following me all at once before using the Combustion skill to kill them all out (only works with maxed skill points though so it leaves Bernie with less perks)

However for Xbox in Particular, it’s soooo much easier to just run at things and “Use” a AoE skill then it is to attempt to quickly fumble through your inventory.

I really enjoy the non-spreading fires and ability to suck them back up with Willows Lighter, you can pretty much just light any random tree in a forest for light/heat/sanity and you won’t have to worry about burning down an entire forest.

Which I find Hilarious AF… Because the Fireball spell is supposed to provide Light/Heat/Sanity for Willow- But for reasons unbeknownst to me.. DO Still cause things around it to Set fire.

[arubaro]

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Weapons/Canes/Lighter/Torch can & often DOES mess up your Inventory-

If you put them together in the left part and without empty slots or non hand items in between they dont mess up 

[Kwaik]

1 hour ago, arubaro said:

If you put them together in the left part and without empty slots or non hand items in between they dont mess up 

Frogs/pirates doe 

 

Plus the worst part of putting the all the way to the left is when trying to un equip items (ie to preserve fuel) and then having to scroll alll the wah to the left and then all the way to the right of the inventory. 

 

Game desperately needs a legit QOL patch for all the consoles for some of the basic functions (hp bars, inventory management) 

[Ohan]

5 hours ago, Kwaik said:

What's people's opinions on building out Willow's skill tree atm? 

This is the setup ive been having a lot of fun with: 

Spoiler

I started this world out with full lunar alignment (and Fire Ball instead of fire fighter) because i knew i wanted to do FW early to get to shadow rifts and i wanted the extra dmg from being lunar aligned since i find FW still really tricky . But in hindsight it wasnt necessary i think. Bernie allows u to do the entire fight fully insane which was really helpful for me to reduce micomanaging inventory swapping and Bernie mostly holds FW aggro in the middle of the arena while u kill the hands which means hes not gonna run into random woven shadows as hes chasing u. 

I swapped fire ball for fire fighter because it allows combustion to kill small mobs with 1 cast. Fire ball is really great and fun to use but its function can mostly be replaced by Star staff if u can get it. While the ease of ember farming with Fire Fighter is much more valuable to me. 

Although I think going both Brighter Lighters and Fire Ball and completely ditching lanterns would be a really fun way to play. i hate refueling lanterns .

I also think full Bernie or full Lighters builds sound really interesting. This is what i would do for both: 

Spoiler

 

5 hours ago, Kwaik said:

Lunar fire seems to be the strongest, albeit a little clunky

i wouldnt say one is stronger than the other, because they both do different things. Lunar fire is great for mowing down swarms of small mobs like spiders/monkeys/hounds etc and against the Void Trio. But i also found it very clunky and im not a fan of it visually, it just looks odd to me. 

The Shadow spell i find much more fun to use and incorporate into kiting patterns against bosses and looks way less weird than willow spewing out lunar flame blast. its especially fun to use in the CC fight, particularly against phase 3 CC each bolt deals ~120 dmg against CC. And also the zombie bosses. It can also stun DFLY (but afterwards not enough dps for a scale in my experience) and it can one-shot elemental hounds. 

I dont think her affinity spells (or any of her spells) r expensive. Fire fighter and Combustion make gathering embers a breeze especially when u have some wasp hives clustered around each other. And even without fire fighter it was still really easy. 

Thats probably my biggest issue with playing WIllow now, i dont really feel like ive earned all this power . i wish her downside was more pronounced. 

5 hours ago, Kwaik said:

How much am I losing out of I don't take Bernies affinity skill?

Bernie's affinity skills give him "planar entity protection" or something like that which makes him waay tankier against physical damage (like a genuine planar mob), in addition to the flat planar damage/defense bonuses the skills give. So if ur planning on using Bernie a lot i would recommend not skipping his affinity skill. Besides they make him look awesome  how can u skip on that?! 

Edited January 9 by Ohan