Improving Willow's Lighter and the Act of Using Her Spells

[Reecitz]

According to Klei, Willow's spells are meant to compliment her combat capabilities; in my opinion, it is a bit difficult to achieve that when you need to frequently swap between using ethereal embers, equipping a tool to ignite things, and a weapon that does sufficient damage. Any activity involving inventory management is especially challenging for console players, specifically controller-users (since I'm a PC player who uses a controller, but I changed some buttons around so that swapping between two hand items is a bit easier, but more than two is a bit much for me). So I thought of a potential solution: what if Willow's Lighter had a single inventory slot above it when equipped, similar to Walter's Slingshot, it could only hold ethereal embers, and it's only available after unlocking the Ember Tender skill?

 

Automatic Ember-Gathering

If at least one ethereal ember is in the slot, Willow will automatically gather embers as long as she has her lighter equipped. (Although I wish this was the case in general, maybe this would serve as a fair-enough compromise. 

Automatic Lighter-Refueling

Before Willow's Lighter reaches 0%, it will consume ethereal embers in the slot, enough to restore it to 100%.

Increased Lighter Damage

Increasing the combat capabilities of the lighter itself would make it so you wouldn't need to to swap tools and weapons much, if at all, unless you really want/need to; one way to do this is by Increasing its damage, depending on the amount of ethereal embers it's holding. Although it could be physical damage, it probably wouldn't make much sense, so either it adds a flat amount of fire damage (so that it works against mobs who can't be ignited but still gets hurt by fire) or it increases the fire damage over time when igniting mobs.

Quick-Select/Instant-Cast Spells

While there are ethereal embers in Willow's Lighter, using the alternate action with it equipped when not using it to light objects will skip past the spell-selection wheel and automatically choose your last-selected spell. Maybe it could even automatically cast spells that don't really need to be aimed, like Shadow Fire and Burning Frenzy. 

When fighting against mobs that can't be ignited, swapping items would unfortunately still be neccessary, but at least you're swapping between two items in this instance: Willow's Lighter (to quickly cast one of her affinity spells) and an efficient weapon. 

 

I'm certain this solution isn't perfect, but I feel it could at least be a start to solving this issue in particular. There are other issues that could be resolved, but I already discussed the topic a few days ago. 

Edited March 15 by Reecitz

[Reecitz]

Don't know if this actually does anything or not, but bump because why not; I've seen other people doing this.

[Frosty_Mentos]

Only thing I'd give as a suggestion is lighter actually acting as ember storage for her with auto fueling cause having stacks and stacks of those embers clutters inventory in a gross way for me and I dislike it fairly. That much only I'd suggest.

Other than that, I find her lighter really powerful and unnecessary to need more to what she already has. In a way, she is quite overloaded for a character. I like her a lot, she does good damage, she got one of highest survivability of all characters if played decently enough and she's got fire - 1# crowd control tool.

[Reecitz]

1 hour ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

Only thing I'd give as a suggestion is lighter actually acting as ember storage for her with auto fueling cause having stacks and stacks of those embers clutters inventory in a gross way for me and I dislike it fairly. That much only I'd suggest.

Other than that, I find her lighter really powerful and unnecessary to need more to what she already has. In a way, she is quite overloaded for a character. I like her a lot, she does good damage, she got one of highest survivability of all characters if played decently enough and she's got fire - 1# crowd control tool.

Most of what I posted was meant to potentially address the issues that are inventory management and pressing a series of buttons too often, which is especially taxing on controllers; if they find another way to fix that issue, then my input isn't neccessary. 

But I do want SOME improvement with how she plays from a "less clunky gameplay" perspective before this beta is over, but Wormwood seems to be the one with the highest priority.

[prettynuggets]

i dont know about controller setting but is it possible for action triggered by several key pressed together to induce special action ? like pressing two bumper key to trigger the ember wheel to choose spell to cast? 
 

keyboard+mouse wise i think they were fine as it is, i would be really annoyed if i have to check how much ember i have by equipping lighter first. 
i much rather they made that lighter is stay 0% and not breaking.. 
i imagine that instant cast spell would make me accidently use spell just cus i forgot lol .

over all i kinda dislike the automatic/instant thing you propose here cus it hard to imagine the flow on how it happen without messing on the ember management .. i mean like in one situation while i only have 2 ember left the lighter just decided to consume to refill itself while i much rather loosing the ligther and cast fire ball. it would be soo annoying to have no control on that.
 

[Reecitz]

2 minutes ago, prettynuggets said:

i dont know about controller setting but is it possible for action triggered by several key pressed together to induce special action ? like pressing two bumper key to trigger the ember wheel to choose spell to cast? 
 

keyboard+mouse wise i think they were fine as it is, i would be really annoyed if i have to check how much ember i have by equipping lighter first. 
i much rather they made that lighter is stay 0% and not breaking.. 
i imagine that instant cast spell would make me accidently use spell just cus i forgot lol .

over all i kinda dislike the automatic/instant thing you propose here cus it hard to imagine the flow on how it happen without messing on the ember management .. i mean like in one situation while i only have 2 ember left the lighter just decided to consume to refill itself while i much rather loosing the ligther and cast fire ball. it would be soo annoying to have no control on that.
 

I'm willing to hear some alternative suggestions from you to improve the optimization of using spells for controllers, though you just admitted you know nothing about them.

Also, you're concerned about accidentally casting a spell? I'm sure there are times where people accidentally telepoof while holding a lazy explorer, or Wortox accidentally soul hops; it is what it is, at least it'd be better than rummaging through your inventory and navigating through various menus just to cast a spell. I'm sure you're a pro at doing that with your keyboard, but I'm trying to be inclusive here.

[prettynuggets]

3 minutes ago, Reecitz said:

I'm willing to hear some alternative suggestions from you to improve the optimization of using spells for controllers, t

well if u see closely i did say why dont add a special key to trigger special action? like on willow and maxwell now have a wheel action.
by pressing 2 specific key to trigger the whell.
it does happen in another kind of game. that two button press together = action. while i know there no such action in DST. 
btw i play on switch also, not mainly only when i travel times to times. but im pretty sure there were not any setting to let u make a two key action to trigger special slot/action.
 

6 minutes ago, Reecitz said:

people accidentally telepoof while holding a lazy explorer, or Wortox accidentally soul hops; it is what it is

yeah but it didnt cost 12.5% of durability. 

11 minutes ago, Reecitz said:

at least it'd be better than rummaging through your inventory and navigating through various menus just to cast a spell

once i again thats why im saying the first line on my post.

 

[Reecitz]

Just now, prettynuggets said:

well if u see closely i did say why dont add a special key to trigger special action? like on willow and maxwell now have a wheel action.
by pressing 2 specific key to trigger the whell.
it does happen in another kind of game. that two button press together = action. while i know there no such action in DST. 
btw i play on switch also, not mainly only when i travel times to times. but im pretty sure there were not any setting to let u make a two key action to trigger special slot/action.
 

yeah but it didnt cost 12.5% of durability. 

once i again thats why im saying the first line on my post.

 

I agree with you there. As I said recently in the latest hotfix post, I think the controls/UI for controller gameplay could use an overhaul of sorts, since the experience is different from keyboard & mouse anyway. I mentioned more advanced button controls like holding a button and button combinations, as well as introducing a item wheel of some kind.

That's more likely to happen if we're lucky, but I suggested what I said in my original post as a potential solution they could implement now, while they're finally taking another look at Willow's skill tree. 

(But I guess Wormwood has higher priority.)