Concern About Wormwood's Blooming Skill

[Cheggf]

There's a beta branch now so it can go here :steamhappy:

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, and not even that much less since 30% more is the difference between 4 uses and 5 uses.

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?

[Jakepeng99]

Make the 30% boost apply to all fertalisers. Let him heal more from them.

[arubaro]

11 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Make the 30% boost apply to all fertalisers. Let him heal more from them.

No please, people who plah WW is because his downside,  every nerf to his downsides kills the character. You already get hp for free with Photosynthesis...

 

The fertilize perk should also buff how much we stay in full bloom so both strategies are considered

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, arubaro said:

No please, people who plah WW is because his downside,  every nerf to his downsides kills the character. You already get hp for free with Photosynthesis...

 

The fertilize perk should also buff how much we stay in full bloom so both strategies are considered

Rarely people will use his fertalisers to heal. The blooming branch is the 2nd weakest so needs niches.

[cropo]

While I like the idea of photosynthesis healing a bit more, overall I don't see why Wormwood needs even more healing. The small buff he got a long time ago(a year or two I think?) that slightly improved fertilizer healing to be better than Hamlet rates was good enough already. Just make poultices with Wormwood, honestly I use poultices on every char to not have to deal with expiration and opening bundles for healing. They stack high and never expire, just use those instead of further buffs to his natural healing.

[Cheggf]

I don't think Wormwood needs any buffs, he just needs to not be nerfed in a misguided attempt to buff him.

[mykenception]

On 3/10/2024 at 5:55 PM, cropo said:

While I like the idea of photosynthesis healing a bit more, overall I don't see why Wormwood needs even more healing. The small buff he got a long time ago(a year or two I think?) that slightly improved fertilizer healing to be better than Hamlet rates was good enough already. Just make poultices with Wormwood, honestly I use poultices on every char to not have to deal with expiration and opening bundles for healing. They stack high and never expire, just use those instead of further buffs to his natural healing.

we have many methods to heal as wormwood now. From fertilizers to conventional healing methods like salves, poultice, sleeping and batbats

tbh I still wanted the petal production back than photosynthesis

[Cheggf]

On 3/11/2024 at 7:18 AM, mykenception said:

we have many methods to heal as wormwood now. From fertilizers to conventional healing methods like salves, poultice, sleeping and batbats

tbh I still wanted the petal production back than photosynthesis

Yeah, I think the Photosynthesis perk is really boring. The petal one was so much more fun, even if it wasn't amazing.

[HowlVoid]

On 3/11/2024 at 5:18 AM, mykenception said:

we have many methods to heal as wormwood now. From fertilizers to conventional healing methods like salves, poultice, sleeping and batbats

tbh I still wanted the petal production back than photosynthesis

They removed because it was too good. The number of applications was insane. Rot, beefalo feed, ash, manure, etc.

I wouldn't mind a toned down version but the devs are insistent there's too many uses. 

[Yuuko]

On 3/11/2024 at 4:15 AM, Cheggf said:

I don't think Wormwood needs any buffs, he just needs to not be nerfed in a misguided attempt to buff him.

Yeah this is my concern here.  I think the option to simply get more bloom meter when you entered the stage was a nice spot where you still bounced, but had good up time and low maintenance.  This change completely changes that.  I can't really judge it, but I feel like he's losing a lot more than he's gaining without much purpose.

[Evelo]

It really doesn't need to be better. It is already useful now as is.

[twitchgabo]

I wish they could just buff the  use of tree jam on wormwood, since it is the most difficult fertilizer to get and offers almost no advantage (there is absolutely no point to farm figs lol)

[Cheggf]

5 hours ago, Evelo said:

It really doesn't need to be better. It is already useful now as is.

Do you mean the current version is useful and should be unchanged, or the beta one? 

[Evelo]

5 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Do you mean the current version is useful and should be unchanged, or the beta one? 

The both frankly. They each have their use. But I think skills should be very low impact so who actually cares about my opinion.