Wormwoods Crafting

[Silversliver]

Wormwood has an entire insight branch dedicated to crafting plants. The one problem with these is they're prohibitively expensive. In order to illustrate this, I'll list the recipe to make each plant, and how long it takes that plant to refund only the part that it grows.

Sapling: costs 5 twigs, theoretical total time to pay itself off, 20 days

Spoiler

each sapling takes 4 days to grow a new twig.
Personal experience, I only got 3 twigs over 20 days so I'm unsure if lunar saplings are just slightly worse than normal saplings.

Additionally costs 5 hp

 

Berry Bush (both types): costs 8 juicy berries, theoretically in order to turn 8 juicy berries into 8 berries takes from 24 days 50ish days (unclear in regards to time since fertilized)

Spoiler

each berry bush takes 3-5 days to grow 1 berry, but takes longer the closer it is to needing to be fertilized
Personal experience, the pointed bushes grew slightly faster, and I got 4 or 5 in a 20 day period. Interestingly a wild berry bush grows one every 3 days.

Additionally costs 3 rot and 10 hp.

 

Juicy Berry Bush: costs 3 rot 8 berries 10hp, theoretically in order to turn 8 berries into 9 juicy berries takes from 27 to 39 days.

Spoiler

each juicy berry bush takes 9-13 days to grow 3 juicy berries.
Personal experience, it regrew twice in 20 days

Additionally costs 3 rot and 10 hp.

.

 

Monkeytails: costs 4 reeds, theoretical total time to pay itself off, 12 days

Spoiler

each monkeytail takes 3 days to grow a new reed.
Personal experience I got 6 reeds over 20 days, so one every 3 days.

Additionally costs 1 banana and 15 hp.

This is the only recipe I don't think is overpriced to produce with too low a return. I would probably use this recipe if it was in Wormwood's base kit

 

Fleshy Bulb/Lureplant: costs 5 leafy meat, theoretical total time to pay itself off, 10 days.

Spoiler

each lureplant takes 2 days to grow a new leafy meat.
This plant is annoying to get enough of naturally without just playing longer.

Additionally costs 2 compost wraps (costs 5 manure 2 rot 1 nitre each) and 25 hp.

While this recipe pays itself off relatively fast, getting 5 leafy meat at one time can be tricky. I might use it on occasion, if it was in Wormwood's base kit.

 

Looking at the payoff time for these recipes I honestly don't think people would use them much even if they didn't take an insight point, I think Wormwood's insight should give more than a single recipe each (looking at you juicy berries), be less expensive, and/or should make a sprout instead of the dug up version.

Maybe it's just my play style, but I honestly don't think that spending more resources and insight points is better than just using a shovel. (recipe, 2 twigs, 2 flint, returns 25 twigs, berry bushes, or even grass which Wormwood cannot grow for some reason)

 

Have you seen Wormwood players actually use these? The only time I've seen people comment on them is during the skill reveals on youtube where they comment they are neat, then proceed to only make them with freecraft mode on.

[SSneaky]

1 hour ago, Silversliver said:

Have you seen Wormwood players actually use these? The only time I've seen people comment on them is during the skill reveals on youtube where they comment they are neat, then proceed to only make them with freecraft mode on.

I've always seen a "oh hey these things are about to rot i should invest in berries NOW!" craft.

especialy with juicy berries (which i like more than normal berries)

[Silversliver]

are you saying that feature is worth 3 insight points?
I guess a better question is how much time do you spend picking berries you know you won't eat?

[SSneaky]

3 hours ago, Silversliver said:

I guess a better question is how much time do you spend picking berries you know you won't eat?

not enough.

[Wonz]

They cost more and don’t help as quickly as a shovel. So, of course, those perks are not preferable.
If I decide to get bushes not by shovelling, then in time, I get enough berries for one juicy bush minus three rot. The shoveler would get eight bushes ready to replant and eight berries to eat/cook, plus save more rot for fertilizing than me. I could also shovel but then I would have only 1 more bush and no food in that time.
It doesn’t actually make food problems easier; you just waste time choosing this path.

Some people want to be able to craft them, but due to the time they take to craft, they’re not useful outside of “megabasing.” So, those crafts should be some universal niche craft accessed through some different means like terra firma tamper or sawhorse are with turf and furniture.
This perk doesn’t help with the common problem, so that’s why it’s not a common choice.

This branch could be replaced with crafts, giving a reason to farm less popular farm choices. Nobody farms durians, pomegranates, or peppers (unless Warly) seriously.

Maybe a farm version of:
Durian Mace - it’s spiky, ouch! Farm Hambat.
Cluster Pomegrenades - looping throwables are bad due to travel time; clusters mean a lot of area is covered to compensate for travel time
Spiny Bindweed Trap - immobilizes small enemies for some time, making it easier to deal with enemies in hordes one by one
Asparagus Whip - a godsend for players with a laggier connection or accidentally joining an official Klei server with 5+ players.

Everyone probably notices that people value combat perks mostly. Sleepcloud and offensive husk perks are praised. You can’t go wrong with something like that. Even Wigfrid could finally appreciate a Wormwood player farming vegetables if he had useful crafts to share."

 

TLDR;
Plant crafts don't speed up how fast you can get the resource compared to just shoveling so they're not useful for gathering the resource, they now only exist for megabasing. So plant crafting is very niche and could be moved somewhere else and be accessed by any character since handful of players still appreciates the possiblity. The branch could be reworked into something else capitalizing on something what's lacking yet still thematical. 

[Silversliver]

On 3/16/2024 at 1:57 PM, Wonz said:

This branch could be replaced with crafts, giving a reason to farm less popular farm choices.

I honestly think the branch is just extremely under tuned, for comparison let me bring up Wilson's alchemy tree, he has 10 perk points he can spend just on alchemy, every single one gives at least 2 recipes, essentially giving a way to go from one to the other, with the first one turning 3 twigs into 1 log, or 1 log into 2 twigs. Wormwood can turn berries into juicy berry bushes, or juicy berries into berry bushes, but this takes him two insight points.

Wormwood should have more recipes packed into each insight, they should look like this
Plant Crafting I - able to craft saplings, lunar saplings, grass tufts.
Plant Crafting II - able to craft berry bushes, juicy berry bushes
Foreign Plant Crafting - able to craft monkeytails, banana bushes, stone fruit bushes
Plant Awakening - able to craft lureplants, sea sprout starter
Green Thumb - when you plant a plant it is treated as though it naturally spawned, removing the need for fertilizer

I'd probably want to put a bit more into Plant Crafting II and Plant Awakening, because even with all this I still don't think it's better than just using a shovel. And this isn't even touching on the fact that each one of the recipes is extremely overpriced.

I think the biggest problem with this entire tree is that it still doesn't give anything that you can't get without the perks, I think that Wormwood's crafting tree still needs something to make it better than a shovel, my first thought was to add some of the cool plants in ds alone that wormwood could craft, but what do you guys think?

[Wonz]

Making it cost only 3 points wouldn't make it any less niche thing. people for sure would spend points on path to shroom and husk then have to choose between left or right bottom branches, right has photosynthesis which is getting a buff. You don't want those because photosynthesis heal is tiny and left branch is just expensive shovel. You don't even shovel as much as you need to recover your health so most will probably go for photosynthesis, likely no points left. You need a point in lunar perks to deal more damage to shadows. 
If I ever ran out of replantables (i never did) in my world then I would need to craft them and only then, i'd rather just go to lunar or moonquay to get the better bushes than go through hustle of upgrading the postern and using idol to reset the left branch after I don't need it. But I'd rather have passive heal than something that I might need once every 100 worlds.

[Silversliver]

39 minutes ago, Wonz said:

Making it cost only 3 points wouldn't make it any less niche thing

this is my point, even if it was all built into Wormwood's base power set most people would only use it when their berries were turning into rot.

I really do think that Wormwood needs to be able to learn something you can't craft otherwise, there's no reason to spend insight points otherwise, but I love the idea of wormwood crafting plants, I like the idea that wormwood makes bramble husks and living logs, those are the things he brings to the party, and think that his skill tree should expand on that.

I do actually love the idea about the crop weapons, especially since wormwood has almost no incentive to farm as is, I just want wormwood to have his silly plant growing powers without them being bad.

[SSneaky]

1 hour ago, Silversliver said:

I honestly think the branch is just extremely under tuned, for comparison let me bring up Wilson's alchemy tree, he has 10 perk points he can spend just on alchemy, every single one gives at least 2 recipes, essentially giving a way to go from one to the other, with the first one turning 3 twigs into 1 log, or 1 log into 2 twigs. Wormwood can turn berries into juicy berry bushes, or juicy berries into berry bushes, but this takes him two insight points.

Wormwood should have more recipes packed into each insight, they should look like this
Plant Crafting I - able to craft saplings, lunar saplings, grass tufts.
Plant Crafting II - able to craft berry bushes, juicy berry bushes
Foreign Plant Crafting - able to craft monkeytails, banana bushes, stone fruit bushes
Plant Awakening - able to craft lureplants, sea sprout starter
Green Thumb - when you plant a plant it is treated as though it naturally spawned, removing the need for fertilizer

I'd probably want to put a bit more into Plant Crafting II and Plant Awakening, because even with all this I still don't think it's better than just using a shovel. And this isn't even touching on the fact that each one of the recipes is extremely overpriced.

I think the biggest problem with this entire tree is that it still doesn't give anything that you can't get without the perks, I think that Wormwood's crafting tree still needs something to make it better than a shovel, my first thought was to add some of the cool plants in ds alone that wormwood could craft, but what do you guys think?

OOO, sea sprout stater without the need of killing sea weeds thus making sea weeds be able to increase in population. banana investment for easy To late game (due to being imune to brightshades., and Green thumb

yeah i'm down for that.

[Skyscale]

All the craft plants that wormwood makes, in my opinion, are just one time to organize the base and set up farms.  When you have everything, all points can be redistributed.  But of course, when you no longer have natural resources on the map to make more, these crafts are welcome

[Silversliver]

On 3/19/2024 at 8:46 AM, Skyscale said:

when you no longer have natural resources on the map to make more, these crafts are welcome

Twiggy trees naturally spawn, so the saplings aren't really that helpful, and why am I stuck with only the lunar variety?
You can't craft the berry bushes without berries, and I tend to run out of those before I run out of bushes, but if I'm switching to other characters to build my base it's probably mostly for aesthetics anyways, so why is it 2 insight points?
monkeytails and lureplants both spawn naturally in the world, having them late in the skill tree is balanced by the fact that monkeytails are good, and it's very slightly convenient to not have to wait until spring to get more lureplants.

The main resource that I might run out of is grass tufts. They naturally turn into grass geckos that die to beefalo, hounds, lunar rain, etc. If you started in a grass gecko world you might not even have 40 grass tufts in the overworld, and Wormwood can't craft more.