Concern About Wormwood's Blooming Skill

[Cheggf]

In the latest developer stream, they mentioned that they were replacing the perk that increases the starting and maximum bloom of Wormwood by 50% with a perk that increases the bloom gained from items by 30%, to try to improve the perk. However, unless there is more to it than just what they said, I believe that this will overall be a nerf in most situations for most players.

From what I've seen, most Wormwoods will start the game by trying to bloom off of a single item, like a rotten fish morsel, and unless it changes the formula the 30% gain for that will be completely unnoticeable (693 seconds instead of 699 seconds). Then they try to do one of two things: either allow bloom to naturally decay so that you use a single blooming item once every 5 days so they spend the majority of the time in stage 3 with some periods of stage 2, or they mass produce a lot of some blooming resource like compost wrap and just spam that to stay in stage 3.

The 30% increase would help with the strategy of mass producing a resource, but it would be much worse for the cheaper strategy of periodically dipping into stage 2. The current 50% increase also increases the starting amount by 50%, so with that perk removed you'll lose a day and a half of bloom, using many more items and being in stage 2 much more often.

But either way, both of those measures are just a temporary stopgap until they do a little sailing. Not even a lot, just enough to get a few bottles and either acquire some kelp or find stalks to plant the kelp. After that fertilizing is essentially free. Kelp grows year-round in only 3 days and is very easy to amass, and ashes are obtained by just burning something like twigs, grass, or rot. A use of growth formula is only 0.2 ashes and 0.2 kelp, it is essentially free. Being able to go an extra 20 minutes before needing to refertilize is a much more useful ability than using slightly less of a free item.

Overall it's not a huge deal, but I think unless there's more to the skill than adding 30% to the value of fertilizers, it's going to be considerably worse than the current version. The only advantage that 30% boost would have is during the period before getting bottles, and only if you're choosing to do the much more expensive mass production of items (when you could have spent the time gathering those items sailing instead to permanently get free fertilization). Perhaps the 30% boost could be a different skill, or the skill gives both the current and the proposed effects?

[Evelo]

Idk. I bloom when I am in the mood to bloom. Then again I also don't use this line because blooming isn't what is important to me as a Wormwood player. It is the lack of healing via food and the massive sanity control.

[Jakepeng99]

16 hours ago, Cheggf said:

However, unless there is more to it than just what they said, I believe that this will overall be a nerf in most situations for most players.

Having to exit bloom over and over is just annoying. Fertaliser is normally cheaper. once you get kelp and bottles.

 

Some will use compost wraps too for healing which made the skill even more bad design wise.

Also use the beta branch thread, not general discussion.

[Cheggf]

14 hours ago, Evelo said:

Idk. I bloom when I am in the mood to bloom. Then again I also don't use this line because blooming isn't what is important to me as a Wormwood player. It is the lack of healing via food and the massive sanity control.

Yeah, it's not a huge deal, but from what they said it isn't the buff they think it is.

6 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Having to exit bloom over and over is just annoying. Fertaliser is normally cheaper. once you get kelp and bottles.

Yes, it's very easy to get bottles which makes the new perk useless.

6 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Some will use compost wraps too for healing which made the skill even more bad design wise.

Which skill are you referring to?

6 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Also use the beta branch thread, not general discussion.

There is currently no active beta. This is not a thread on the beta, this is a thread on the developer stream. 

[Jakepeng99]

8 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Which skill are you referring to?

None. The wrap gives growth formula.

 

Honestly they should just combine the two skills together.

[Swiyss]

I feel like this feature would be really good. I myself was very sad that they simply allowed the blooming to say for THAT much longer for the small amount it took to upgrade it. Now that we can actually use these mechanics to maintain blooming in a much more efficient way, the game will feel less about consuming constant growth formula and more about breaking and arm from time to time to use a wrap.

[Ohan]

Im also not sure how much of an improvement this will be.

Especially considering theres no Bloom meter so even if u get extra bloomness per application its still super easy to overfertilize after uve hit max bloomness so if the aim was to make maintaining bloom more economical idk if it will succeed at it. 

Once u have a couple of bottles theres really no meaningful difference between lets say using 5 applications to max bloom or 3. 

while on the other hand higher max bloom off just a rotten fish or glommer goop or compost wrap in the early game was actually a nice benefit. 

Higher max bloom also meant once u have bottles u dont need to max the invisible meter out as frequently. 

———

I think the new functionality could probably be combined with the old since theyre both pretty understated improvements and it has to compete with the Bramble craft skills on that side of the tree if u want both Cultivator and Guardian skills. 

I really think Wormwood should get a bloom meter or quotes to indicate when the bloom meter is full and when its at 25%. 

Edited March 3 by Ohan

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Ohan said:

Once u have a couple of bottles theres really no meaningful difference between lets say using 5 applications to max bloom or 3. 

Even worse, a 30% increase would be the difference between 4 (technically 3.84) applications and 5. 30% more is not very much in this context.

1 hour ago, Ohan said:

I really think Wormwood should get a bloom meter or quotes to indicate when the bloom meter is full and when its at 25%. 

Maybe they didn't give him a bloom meter 'cause they saw people were making fun of them for giving everyone meters. Too bad a bloom meter would've been one of the better uses of meters